Japanese Literature discussion
This topic is about
Diary of a Void
Book Club
>
10/2023 Diary of a Void, Emi Yagi
date
newest »
newest »
Has anyone started yet? I'm excited to hear people's thoughts. I reviewed this one for Asian Review of Books (https://asianreviewofbooks.com/conten...). This is the aspect of the novel I raised in my review, and one I'm most curious about:
For a reader who has struggled through pregnancy, Shibata’s deception is occasionally uncomfortable. (The myth Shibata buys into early in the book that pregnancy makes a woman’s life easier is patently absurd and stock-in-trade of dangerous misogyny.) Shibata only seems to consider that her actions might cause harm when she speaks to a coworker who has struggled with infertility. Yes, it is empowering to use sexism against men. But it’s also problematic to imply that pregnancy is simple or a ticket to an easier life. For most of the story, pregnant women are their pregnancies to Shibata. She objectifies them the same way the men in Shibata’s life objectify her.
It isn’t until late in the novel that Shibata begins to see the pregnant women she encounters as people with stories of their own. They face hardships beyond the physical discomforts of pregnancy. Unfortunately, Shibata discovers that those hardships include the sexism she has been trying to escape in her workplace by feigning pregnancy. The same kinds of sexist assumptions about who does what are built into marriage and family—“Once the baby’s born,” a desperate friend with a newborn asks her, “why the hell should our roles be so different?”
Pregnant women in Japan routinely experience significant "matahara" (maternity harassment) in Japan. (You can check out this Vice article if you're interested: https://www.vice.com/en/article/kb4dd... .) I appreciate the premise and how it makes for an interesting story, but I wonder how plausible it is that a faux pregnancy makes her professional life easier.
What do other people think?
I've only read 25 pages so far, so I can't say to what extent Yagi is saying that pregnancy makes a woman's life easier. It certainly does sound like she's saying a faux pregnancy makes Shibata's life easier, because she's getting the social benefits of pregnancy without all the hardships of an actual pregnancy.It's sad to see that office life hasn't improved for women by the year 2020 (or perhaps Yagi assumes it hasn't gotten better). As the only women in her section, she has to prepare coffee before meetings (even meetings she doesn't attend), and the men at those meetings can't be bothered to do something as simple as throwing away their paper cups afterwards. So she rebels, and then enjoys what we take for granted in the west: not having to be a servant to your coworkers, not having to work free overtime, and having leisure in the evenings. I expect as the novel progresses she'll be drawn slowly into a trap of her own creation with no way out.
I find the setup novel, but so far nothing much has really happened with it. I guess it's a slow burn and we're just letting her relax before the troubles begin.
Started and finished on a day of travel and found it very enjoyable!Still recovering from jet lag, but my initial reaction is to compare Shibata to the main characters in some of Kawakami Hiromi and Murata Sayaka's works - social outsiders who try to carve out a space for themselves within the strictures of contemporary Japanese culture. Having said that, Shibata feels neither like a dreamy Kawakami narrator nor an alienated Murata weirdo; Shibata feels a little more like an average mid-30s professional woman who commits a small, believable act and then commits to her lie with outstanding dedication.
More thoughts soon, but I thought it was a delight. :)
(Around page 80)This is a quick, enjoyable read. Faking a pregnancy is the setup to the novel, but I'm finding the core of the book is something very different: solitude.
Our narrator isn't lonely, but she does enjoy being alone. Even alone in a crowd. She enjoys spending time alone in the evenings after work and going places by herself. She has friends as well, but spends more time by herself than with them. As someone who has lots of friends but also enjoys solitude, I can totally relate.
For that reason, I can see why Alison classified it as "Sexlessness in Japanese Literature." But I'm not sure that classification goes far enough.
Bill wrote: "(Around page 80)This is a quick, enjoyable read. Faking a pregnancy is the setup to the novel, but I'm finding the core of the book is something very different: solitude.
Our narrator isn't lone..."
Oh. I didn't mean to "classify" it as Sexlessness in Japanese Literature so much as to use it as an example of "sexlessness in Japanese literature" when I was on the subject. I definitely agree that solitude is a much wider-ranging topic and Diary should be a part of that discussion, too!
Once she starts aerobics and begins hanging around with expectant women, I start to feel the lying is wrong in a way it wasn't with her job and coworkers. Maybe taking advantage of your employer is okay because they take advantage of you? Something like that. She really should have stopped going instead of pretending to be one of them.As Colin said, it's a quick read, and I finished it this evening. I'll save spoiler discussions of the weird ending (the last 40 pages? from the end of week 32) until the end of the month so people have more time to read it for themselves.
I find the movement beyond the workplace and into the group of moms interesting, in that the only time she is able to find community with other women is via the shared condition of (expectant) motherhood.Bill wrote: "Once she starts aerobics and begins hanging around with expectant women, I start to feel the lying is wrong in a way it wasn't with her job and coworkers. Maybe taking advantage of your employer is..."
I've also been mulling over the idea that Shibata has traded in babies of one kind for a baby of another in shifting her attention away from her seemingly helpless and cranky male co-workers, and wondering whether Shibata's performative motherhood is as much of a lie as I originally thought...
I had a comment to make on names, and forgot it in my last post.The kanji for 'sky' also means 'empty' and is the first kanji in 'void.' So the first kanji in Sorato's name is the same as the first kanji in the title of the novel, and Sorato can be thought of as 'void person'.
Without spoiling anything, and agreeing with some of you that it was a story of extreme solitude, to me it also felt like a slow descent into mental illness.I'm also sure that because of my job (I'm a clinical psychologist) I often frame situations in a very specific context known to me, but I must admit that if at first I also found the whole thing amusing, the finally taking revenge on male chauvinist colleagues for example, but slowly I felt a feeling of anguish and concern for the protagonist so I liked the book less and less.
Of course, I cannot say anything about the author's way of writing because I read the Italian translation, which was very good anyway.
At half way through, My reflection was that too much of the current fiction that I have been reading has distinct themes of isolation and alienation. I do appreciate the narrator’s observations, in this I-novel, of her personal life and of the people around her, but there are very few with which she has empathy. Her meetings with the moms-to-be may have provided a semblance of community but I am not sure. On completion, this is probably the defining quote for me:
I’m always so alone,” the Shibata says. “That’s the way it is from the moment we come into this world, but I’m still not used to it — how alone we all are.”
Maybe, I will have more comments and some questions when we all finish
Almost the end of the month, so time enough for spoiling discussions.In the last 40 pages, something odd happens to our main character. She seems to start believing she's pregnant, and she even fools an obstetrician. Or did she?
Two possibilities were brought up in our discord channel yesterday, neither of which I think precisely hits the mark. The first was Magical Realism: the narrator becomes pregnant; but I think we can rule this out from the ending. The second is that she's going mad; but her going mad isn't going to convince the obstetrician that she's pregnant.
My take on it after finishing the novel is similar to the second choice, but not exactly. Remember this is written in the first person. Our narrator has been lying to more and more people as it progresses, and I think it's gotten to the point where she's lying to herself, then writing down those lies, and thus lying to us. She's become an unreliable narrator. She never went to see an obstetrician, or do a number of other things she writes in those 40 pages.
She seems to recover in the afterward, perhaps because she's less socially isolated after she goes back to work. Now she's only lying to her coworkers again.
This was a fun read. Finished it in a day.. The legitimate sonogram really made me think that may be the narrator has been really tricking us 😂.
Spoilers. I agree with you Bill. At one point I was wondering if she was having a phantom pregnancy, but the obstetrician would have seen this. I think she was lying so much, and was so involved in her own fantasy that she started to believe it herself. She did seem to recover when she went back to work, but in some sense she was still living her own fantasy although with more awareness. I thought it was a good book and I enjoyed reading it.
I don’t think it’s magical realism per se. I think it’s that the truth has ceased to matter in a narrative and metaphorical sense. In some ways, it’s a commentary on the role of women in Japan. It doesn’t matter if they have children or not. Their roles are circumscribed either way. There’s a quote that stood out to me, when Shibata is “chatting” with Mary, mother of Jesus (who’s also this walking contradiction as both virgin and mother):
“Having a baby isn’t easy. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s been two thousand years, and it’s the same old story, right?”
The same truth shows up in the way Shibata’s “mom friends” experience new motherhood.
Also, Shibata continues that farce after the baby is “born”. And it doesn’t become all that less real to her, either. The experience alters the way she loves her life.
I did a podcast episode about "Sexlessness in Japanese Literature" last year for Valentine's Day. (Yes... I know...) It briefly discusses Diary, but it also sets up the context for the kinds of feminist milieu the story may (or may not—you decide!) be a part of. (The episode was marked mature.) Link here: https://readjapaneseliterature.com/20...