The Double Bind of the Feminine Ideal

This mockery doesn’t, nevertheless, cease her from privately judging others on the premise of their weight, age, clothes and social norms. On the novel’s first main turning level, she catches sight of her reflection in a window on a summer season’s day, sunken-eyed and matted. “What I noticed within the reflection was myself,” she observes, “only a depressing lady, who couldn’t even take pleasure in herself on a stunning day like this, on her personal within the metropolis.” Quickly after, Fuyuko tries to imitate Hijiri’s alcohol consumption by forcing herself to drink beer and sake, step by step however intentionally, with a purpose to loosen up — or as she places it, “to let go of my normal self.” In an intoxicated try at self-improvement, Fuyuko indicators up for courses at a college, and finally ends up vomiting in its fundamental corridor. There, she is rescued by a male physics trainer, Mitsutsuka. The 2 set up a tentative friendship, assembly weekly to debate Chopin’s “Berceuse” and the properties of sunshine till a quiet, seemingly mutual attraction types. Exterior of those conferences, Fuyuko continues to regulate to freelance work whereas ingesting copiously.

There’s a cleverness with which “All of the Lovers within the Evening” addresses these modifications, romantic {and professional}, in its protagonist’s life. By together with alcoholism amongst them, Kawakami circumvents the shtick of stale “glow-up” narratives, and preserves Fuyuko as a cipher: nonetheless awkward and depressing for many of the novel, however higher attuned to the false choices and self-enforced hypocrisies endured by her intercourse.

A reunion with Kyoko later within the e book turns into laced with scrumptious irony, as her good friend’s congratulations on Fuyuko’s new profession autonomy warps right into a criticism of Hijiri for pursuing the identical. “There are many individuals who need to put themselves on the market, competing for the highlight,” Kyoko says, “which makes extra issues for the remainder of us. However you don’t have to fret about that, since you’re not like that.” Kyoko repeats rumors about Hijiri’s intercourse life (“she has no self-control”), attributing her assertiveness to her beauty. “All of the go-getters like her,” she says, “they put a lot stress on the ladies round them. … She’s satisfied all the boys, and all her friends, that the ladies within the workplace have to reside as much as her instance and look fairly whereas they’re at it.” Instantly after Kyoko denounces Hijiri comes the revelation that their shared alternative of fragrance binds them to the identical magnificence customary.

But what makes Kawakami’s novel so good is an understanding of why ladies would possibly willingly adhere to regressive modes of performative femininity, even whereas they criticize it. The will to be beloved isn’t any small factor. Fuyuko is skeptical of a life diminished by gendered expectation — at one level, a childhood acquaintance tells Fuyuko that motherhood has robbed her of monetary independence and a way of self, whereas, in the identical breath, urging Fuyuko to have children — and but, the attract of a life with Mitsutsuka is sufficient to make her strive. Maybe influenced by recurring desires during which a model of herself lives in completely satisfied home bliss however then transforms into Hijiri, Fuyuko attends her first (and closing) official date with Mitsutsuka in Hijiri’s garments, her hair blown out, make-up executed.

The climactic tragedy in “All of the Lovers within the Evening” isn’t Mitsutsuka’s unsettling revelation after this date, however a quiet, merciless phrase from Hijiri that intentionally echoes a trauma Fuyuko skilled in her teenagers. Kawakami’s novel is uncompromisingly candid in its appraisal of the hurt ladies inflict on each other, whereas by no means shedding sight of the overarching constructions that lead them to take action within the first place. Compact and supple, it’s a strikingly clever feat.