THE DIFFICULTY OF CHOICE
Does how often—and how consciously—you exercise choice determine a more fulfilling life? This is just one of the questions raised by this Japanese novel I found monotonous and intriguing.
All The Lovers In The Night by Mieko Kawakami (translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd) is very relevant today because the loneliness it describes has become the reality for many young single working people. It conveys with such a keen eye the uncertainty of their lives describing the monotony and bleakness at a granular level. We cannot help but feel sorry for the women trapped in a vicious cycle of work, ambition and disillusionment.
By the end of the third chapter of All The Lovers In The Night, Fuyuko Irie, the protagonist of this novel, chugs enormous quantities of beer and sake, and pukes so much of it that the entire novel feels soggy with despondency. I was unable to wholeheartedly appreciate this novel on a first read because so little happens in it even when the protagonist finally wakes up to go after what she wants.
The specifics of any job in publishing will vary slightly, depending on the scope and personality of the company, but on a basic level, it’s all about making and selling books. One of the various jobs required to make that happen involves reading and re-reading the many sentences that ultimately make up a book, searching for any typos and linguistic or factual errors—in other words, proofreading. This was what I did for this small company. I was a proofreader, spending every moment of my day, from morning to night, hunting for mistakes.
Fuyoko, a lonely woman who is a freelance proofreader begins to drink all of a sudden one day until, soon enough, she begins to resemble a zombie moving through her days in a stupor. Fuyuko has almost no contact with anyone other than the woman who hires her, Hijiri, a woman of the same age who has the opposite temperament. Hijiri is as aggressive, composed and extroverted as Fuyuko is meek, uncertain and withdrawn. While Hijiri has figured out how to hire the best talent to slave away for her, she leads a social life that would be the envy of her peers. However, in time, we learn that she has morals that would make those in the most liberal society cringe. Fuyuko has no social life and when Hijiri becomes her good friend, Fuyuko has no way of pushing back. Yet, she’s careful to not let Hijiri into the workings of her mind or into her private life even though Hijiri tries hard to drill into it.
One day, a chance encounter with a man named Mitsutsuka awakens Fuyuko’s latent sensuality. Both are attracted to each other, sure, but Fuyuko falls deeply in love even as it is clearer and clearer that they’re not really suited for each other at all. She is all of 35 but he is 58. Even if age were a barrier erected in their minds, it’s clear, from the start, that Mitsutsuka wishes to say very little about himself. The impossibility of a future with Mitsutsuka makes her constantly long for a meeting with him. As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko’s past surface and her behavior slips further and further into irrationality. Soon, Fuyuko is in a spiral and we see how there is really no way out of it. Her feelings for Mitsutsuka bring her to a critical moment in an analysis of her own life.
Then a question suddenly came to me. What had I been doing until now?
Had I ever chosen anything? Had I made some kind of choice that led me here? Thinking it over, I stared at the cell phone in my hands. The job that I was doing, the place where I was living, the fact that I was all alone and had no one to talk to. Could these have been the result of some decision I’d made?
I heard a crow crying somewhere in the distance and turned to the window. It occurred to me that maybe I was where I was today because I hadn’t chosen anything.
I applied to whatever colleges my teacher suggested and fell into a job after graduation, which I’d left only because I had to escape.
….
In all these years of doing whatever I was told to do, I had convinced myself that I was doing something consequential, in order to make excuses for myself, as I was doing right now and perpetually dismissed the fact that I’d done nothing with my life, glossing over it all.
The book reaches a glorious epiphanic moment exactly when Fuyoko awakens from her stupor and makes her choice and confesses to Mitsutsuka that she’s dripping with love for him—for a man who is at least 22 years senior to her—and, Mitsutsuka, always the gentleman, stands across from her nodding, watching, waiting, seemingly unable to requite the feeling even though he has confessed on the phone that he has dreamed of being in her bed with her. For me, on a second read of sections of this book, this moment of confession was a highlight, and so masterfully written by the author and the translators too.
But I had to remind myself that I was not in a memory of any kind, but standing here, standing in front of Mitsutsuka, reflected in his eyes, where I could see that I was crying. Mitsutsuka let me squeeze his fingers, not saying anything, standing still for me. This was the first time I learned what it feels to cry with someone there, watching over you.
Not saying a word, just standing there, Mitsutsuka looked like he was waiting patiently for my tears to settle. I heard a car go by, not very far away from us. Using my palm, I wiped the tears, dripping down my chin, then rubbed my eyes, covered my face, and started crying again. Mitsutsuka lifted his free hand and rested it on the crown of my head.
Thus the import and the pathos of this story lies in the climactic moment when Fuyoko chases exactly what she wants, confronts the hopelessness of her situation and, slowly, begins to accepts the futility of it all. The power of All The Lovers In The Night lies in the slow build-up of the sensual tension as the two meet weekly at the cafe, with their only exchanges being books, records and small drawings and innocuous details about each other. While Fuyoko’s story does not end well for her, by the time the story rolls to a close, she is free. She is liberated from the shackles of her own mind.
Fuyoko has begun also the other process, that of healing, For all the bitterness, anxieties and demands inside a close friendship, sisterhood—in good times and in bad—must be nurtured and celebrated. I’ve now read enough about Mieko Kawakami to understand that her strength comes from the many inequities she observes in the life of women and I definitely appreciated this novel for its valuable insights on women’s issues. The women portrayed by Kawakami could have been located about anywhere, I suppose, although, clearly, compared to the west, the life of women in Japan is fettered even more by the traditional notions of patriarchy.
In the novel Kawakami’s own opinions funnel through the character of Hijiri, Fuyoko’s boss and friend, who comes across as bossy, confident and interested in both work and sex. Clearly she enjoys sex and enjoys talking about her sexual partners in her dispassionate and garrulous manner with Fuyoko and with other coworkers, too. One coworker, Kyoko, dislikes her and sees her as conniving, manipulative and promiscuous. Fuyuko who has been subconsciously idolizing Hijiri is taken aback when Kyoko tells her to be careful around Hijiri whom she calls a predator of other women’s lovers.
The relationships between the women in the novel are often competitive, something Kawakami seems to examine as internalized misogyny. When women notice that other women '“lean-in” to their strengths and show the stuff they’re made of, they often invite the wrath and scorn of other women who then tend to show gender bias in favor of men.
Hijiri explains the classic cutthroat behavior between women to Fuyoko in a memorable exchange. When another woman with potential shows up, a talented woman “crushes her like its nothing,” but then she bends to the whims of a male employee thinking that being subservient will allow her to rise up on the good graces of men.
“I’ve seen it so many times, I’m sick of it,” Hijiri says, observing that she stood up for herself to a man at one point—”he thought he could get away with it because I’m a woman, but that was exactly why I couldn’t let it go”—only to have the woman whom she was defending turn around and actually criticize her. She turns around to ask Hijiri the one question that no one will ask a man because being intransigent is acceptable in society for men, but always looked at as being difficult or unruly in women.
‘Aren’t you scared of people hating you?’