4. Grotesque

By Natsuo Kirino

Four books in one month -- in January, no less.  Pretty sure it's a record!

Hubs got me Grotesque for Xmas when he couldn't find Out. The cover photo and thickness of the book kind of deterred me from jumping into it, though I read the first couple of pages.  It began with an unnamed woman with the strange habit of envisioning what her future children would look like if she had sex with whatever man who happened to cross her path.  She wouldn't be obsessed about the men themselves, more how their physical characteristics would mesh with hers in their theoretical offspring.  I found this mindset off-putting as I  sensed this was going into the territory of transgressive fiction, but it was also written in such a fascinating way that only Kirino could do (with the aid of a good translator!).  However, I ended up leaving the book at my MIL's for a couple of years.

When I finally brought Grotesque back home to read, I learned the reason behind this woman's obsession with inherited physical traits. She herself was of mixed ancestry: her mother was Japanese and her father was a Swiss national of Polish descent.  While the narrator had inherited her parent's unremarkable looks, her younger sister Yuriko possessed a startling beauty, the kind of "monstrous" beauty that would upend the lives of both sisters.  Thus, the narrator had always hated her sister.  When she became a teenager, her parents and sister had to move to Switzerland and the narrator stayed in Japan with her maternal grandfather because she had been accepted into a prestigious school.

 Now that I look back on it, I realize that Grandfather was out on parole and the presence of a studious high-school-age granddaughter in his household must have helped make him seem more trustworthy in the eyes of this monitor. My grandfather wanted to hoodwink his probation officer, and I wanted to stay in Japan. We needed each other to accomplish our goals, so in a way we were partners in crime. To top it off, I was able to talk to my grandfather about all of Yuriko’s shortcomings. These were truly the happiest days of my life.

 

Reading about the Q High School for Young Women reminded me of the teen K-drama, Friendly Rivalry, I had been watching with my 13 yo.  The social hierarchies and the bullying were very much on par whether you were a female student in Japan or South Korea.  Your status was determined whether you were considered an insider or outsider.  If you were an insider, you would have entered Q High School via the Q elementary school stream.  Anyone who didn't enter QHS this way was deemed an outsider and there wasn't anything you could do about it, unless you were very cunning or exceedingly beautiful, both of which were rare.  Within the insiders was the wealthy, status-oriented inner circle. Even though every student had to wear the same uniform, the insiders determined the right school bag to carry, the right socks to wear, ie. Ralph Lauren which had the little red embroidered logo visible.

Let’s start with the matriculation ceremonies... The high school freshmen were divided into two distinct groups: those who were continuing on from within the Q school system and those who had entered that year. At a glance it was easy to discern which group was which. The length of our school uniform skirts set us apart.
  Those of us who were entering for the first time—each and every one of us—having successfully passed the entrance exams, had skirts that fell just to the center of our knees, in exact accordance with official school regulations. However, the half who had been in the system since elementary or middle school had skirts that rode up high on their thighs. Now, I’m not talking about the kind of skirts that the girls wear today, skirts that are so skimpy they’re hardly there at all. No, these skirts were just the right length to provide a perfect balance with the girls’ high-quality navy-blue knee socks. Their legs were long and slender, their hair the color of chestnuts. Delicate gold pierced earrings glistened in their ears. Their hair accessories, and their bags and scarves, were very tasteful, and they all had expensive brand-name items that I’d never before actually seen up close. Their elegant sophistication overwhelmed the newly arrived students.
  The difference was not something that would softly fade away with the passage of time. There is no other way to explain it but to say that we new girls lacked what the others girls possessed seemingly by birth: beauty and affluence. We new girls were betrayed by our long skirts and our cropped, lusterless, jet-black hair. Many of us wore thick, unflattering glasses. In a word, the incoming students were uncool.

As an "outsider" the narrator fared ok at QHS by keeping her head down and leading a quiet but relatively happy life with her bonsai-obsessed grandfather in a working class area of Tokyo.  However, during her second year, her mother committed suicide in Switzerland and Yuriko wanted to move back to Japan.  To the narrator's dismay, her sister would  also attend the same high school, but to her relief, Yuriko had  opted to stay with family friends, who were only too happy to have such a beautiful being live with them.  What the narrator didn't know was that Yuriko had learned at a young age to use her beauty to seduce men and began an illicit relationship with her uncle as well as the husband of the house that she's staying!  With the help of a closeted male student, who also happened to be the son of a QHS prof, Yuriko soon commodified her greatest asset, her beauty, by prostituting herself to whomever was willing to pay.

For a nymphomaniac like myself, I suppose there could be no job more suitable than prostitution; it is my God-given destiny. No matter how violent a man might be, or how ugly, at the moment we’re in the act I cannot help but love him. And what’s more I’ll grant his every wish, no matter how shameful. In fact, the more twisted my partner is, the more attracted I will be to him, because my ability to meet my lover’s demands is the one way I can feel alive.

  That is my virtue. It is also my biggest flaw. I can’t deny a man. I’m like a vagina incarnate—female essence embodied. If I ever were to deny a man, I would stop being me.

  I suspect there are lots of women who want to become prostitutes. Some see themselves as valued commodities and figure they ought to sell while the price is high. Others feel that sex has no intrinsic meaning in and of itself except for allowing individuals to feel the reality of their own bodies. A few women despise their existence and the insignificance of their meager lives and want to affirm themselves by controlling sex much as a man would. Then there are those who engage in violent, self-destructive behavior. And finally we have those who want to offer comfort. I suppose there are any number of women who find the meaning of their existence in similar ways. But I was different. I craved being desired by a man. I loved sex. I loved sex so much I wanted to screw as many men as I could. All I wanted were one-night stands. I had no interest in lasting relationships.

The views on prostitution was disappointingly simplistic, even cringey, but what made Grotesque compelling was the deep dive into the damaged psyches of the female characters as they navigated a very competitive prestigious high school: the narrator, her younger sister Yuriko, and her classmate, Katsue. There was a fourth character, Mitsuru, but there weren't any chapters devoted to her POV.

Even though the book was written like in-depth character studies, the outer blurb made it seem more like a crime novel, a la Out.  The novel also began with the narrator as an adult in her late 30s finding out that her old classmate Katsue had been murdered, then about a year later Yuriko was also found murdered under similar circumstances.  Both women were working as prostitutes when they were killed, but the difference was while Yuriko plied her trade full-time, Katsue was a white collar professional employed at a prestigious engineering firm.  The author was inspired by a true story which had generated a lot of media attention in Japan at the time.

I also learned partway through the book, that the English translation in the Penguin Random House (Vintage International) edition featured significant omissions from the original Japanese text.  According to Google AI, approximately 200 pages were cut from the original Japanese, reducing the total length from roughly 800 pages to 600. The most significant change was the removal of an entire final section. In the Japanese version, the narrative concluded with a section where the son of Yuriko's sister turns to male prostitution, with the narrator profiting from his activities. This section was entirely cut from the English edition. The cuts were made by the publisher to reduce length, with some parts deemed repetitive or unnecessary for the English-speaking market. Despite these cuts, the translation is still regarded as an accurate representation of the core story, although it omits a dark, concluding character arc.

Grotesque's over-arching MO was the exploration of female psyches damaged by a class-based, capitalistic, patriarchal society obsessed with status and appearance. Some break societal taboos and embrace their sexuality as a misguided attempt at liberation. A woman like Yuriko would exploit herself as a commodity for what she perceives as her own ends, but when her beauty faded, she realized she really had nothing.  A woman like Katsue, plagued by a deep-seated need for recognition, threw herself into academics and got hired into a good position at a prestigious firm. She eventually became deeply jaded, and turned to prostitution to achieve a twisted sense of self-worth. 

  I handed him my business card with a self-important flourish. A look of shock washed over Arai’s face.
  “I’m sorry if it’s rude for me to ask, but why do you do this sort of thing if you have such a good job?”
  “Why, you wonder?” I gulped down my beer. “At work nobody pays any attention to me.”
  I’d let slip a bit of my true feelings. It was only until I was thirty that I worked with such zeal. When I turned twenty-nine I was sent to a separate research facility. My rival Yamamoto worked only for four years and then quit to get married. 
That left only four of the women who’d originally entered the firm with me... When I turned thirty-three, they finally brought me back to the research office. But there wasn’t a single interesting person there anymore. All the men I had entered the firm with had long since been promoted to higher positions in the inner administration, where women would never be accepted. The younger female office assistants clearly didn’t like me. University women who had entered the firm after me were working less and getting ahead. In short, I had slipped off the fast track. I had clearly been shifted from the winners to the losers. Why would that be? Because I was no longer young. And I was a woman. I was doing a lousy job aging and I could no longer build a solid career.
  “It’s really gotten to me. I feel like I want to get revenge.”
  “Revenge? On who?” Arai looked up at the ceiling. “I suppose everyone feels like that from time to time. We all want revenge. We’ve all been hurt one way or another. But the best thing to do is keep on going as if none of it matters.”
  Well, I didn’t agree. I was going to get revenge. I was going to humiliate my firm, scorn my mother’s pretentiousness, and soil my sister’s honor. I was even going to hurt myself. I who had been born a woman, who was unable to live successfully as a woman, whose greatest achievement in life was getting into Q High School for Young Women. It had been all downhill since. That was it—that was why I was doing what I did, why I turned to prostitution. When it finally struck me, I started to laugh.

Our narrator, who chose to remove herself from the rat race, fared no better, living a bitter, miserable existence. She even corrupted her precious blind nephew, the illegitimate son of Yuriko.  At first she was overjoyed to learn he was blind, but he too would later see his aunt's true self. Even with the missing section, Grotesque was still extremely dark, bleak and pessimistic.  

 Perhaps you believe I am exaggerating. If so, then you are mistaken. For a girl, appearance can be a powerful form of oppression. No matter how intelligent a girl may be, no matter her many talents, these attributes are not easily discerned. Brains and talent will never stand up against a girl who is clearly physically attractive.
  I knew I was by far more intelligent than Yuriko, and it irked me no end that I could never impress anyone with my brains. Yuriko, who had nothing going for her but her hauntingly beautiful face, nevertheless made a terrific impression on everyone who came in contact with her. Thanks to Yuriko, I too had been blessed with a certain talent. My talent was the uncompromising ability to feel spite. And whereas my talent far exceeded those of others, it was a talent that impressed no one but myself. I fawned over my talent. I polished it diligently every day. 

Even Mitsuru (who reminded me of the alpha girl in Friendly Rivalry), who seemed like the only QHS student smart enough to not play the game and rise above the petty competitiveness, plus she possessed a sense of self-worth that the other female characters were incapable of having, did not escape the system unscathed.  The bright shining future remained out of grasp when she got herself sucked into a religious cult. She was even imprisoned for being involved in murder!

None of the women could transcend their situations, resorting to suicide, cults or prostitution! To be fair, the male counterparts weren't really that better off, most of them resentful, vindictive assholes. The only character who was finally able to escape her circumstance was Mrs Johnson.  After she learned her husband had been having an affair with Yuriko under their roof, she divorced him. Even though she had been damaged by awful people, she managed to move one and live a life of her own.

I would have to say though that the ending was most unsatisfying. Even without knowing about the Random House excision, there were some unresolved storylines. About halfway into the novel, a Chinese man named Zhang was introduced. We never found out how Katsue died.  Zhang had admitted to killing Yuriko but denied killing Katsue. Even though Katsue was with Zhang in that sordid apartment, she had left and went home.  The unnamed narrator resorted to prostitution as a way to make ends meet.  Her grandfather died, so she knew she had to pay for his funeral expenses, move out of the gov subsidized apartment as the lease was under his name. She also wanted to buy the computer she had promised to her nephew Yurio so he could compose music. By the time she turned her first trick and lost her virginity, she had hatred for Yurio and he had also begun to despise her. 

If anything, the editors should have shortened the section about Zhang, no matter if his storyline was fascinating, there were good reasons:

- even though his story had similar themes about poverty, economic instability, exploitation, etc. it didn't fit with the female-focused narrative

- we learn later that his deposition was partially fabricated; it was possible that his time with the politico's daughter didn't happen at all and that he had forced his sister into prostitution and later killed her

What impressed me, though, was how deeply Kirino went into the socio-economic backdrop Zhang grew up in.  It made me remember my last trip to Hong Kong when I was 15.  We did a day trip into the mainland to visit the village my dad grew up in.  This was in the late 1980's so very close to Zhang's time period. I had an old Mamiya SLR that used to belong to my dad who gave it me for my b&w photography class. I remember walking around taking photos and noticed some young women who were glaring at me with undisguised envy at my blue jeans and leather combat boots.  I wasn't wearing anything fancy, and none of my clothing were even brand names, but they saw I was a Westerner with the kind of privilege and opportunities they could only dream of having. Reading about Zhang's jealousy made me think of those young village women.

To stretch myself and expand my knowledge, I wanted to continue my schooling and go on to higher-level classes. But my family was poor. They could only afford to send me to the village elementary school. When I realized that my dreams would never be realized, I suppose—like a tree whose roots are stymied and twisted and not allowed to grow—I began to nurture a dark jealousy in my heart, an ugly envy. I believed fate had determined that I would be born into this miserable existence.

  Going elsewhere to seek work was the only way people like me could escape this fate. When I went to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, I worked long and hard, thinking all the while that eventually I also would be able to enjoy a wealthy life and save money just like the people from those regions. But after I came to Japan, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that my plans were utterly hopeless. Why might that be? Because the wealth of Japan was beyond compare even to that of China’s port cities.
  If I had not been Chinese, if I had been born Japanese, I surely would not be experiencing these hardships now. 

All the characters were such awful, awful people. The narrator was just self-aware enough to be fascinating, but not insightful enough to see beyond the machinations of societal pressures.  Still, I kept on reading, sucked into the quagmire of their neuroses because Kirino's writing is so captivating. She could be as brutal as Patricia Highsmith about the most damaged, garbagey people on earth, and I'll still keep reading.  That nastiness often got channeled via the narrator.

  During lunch break, Kazue sauntered over to my desk, beaming with confidence. She placed her lunch box on an empty chair and dragged the chair over to my desk with a rattling screech.
  “Is it okay if I eat with you?”
  She’d already sat down before she asked. Typical. I turned a frosty gaze on her. Dog! Fashion nightmare! Jerk! She looked even more repulsive today than usual, so repulsive I just wanted to shout abuse after abuse at her. She’d tried to curl her hair. Usually it hung limply down over her head like a helmet, but today it stuck out on both sides like a wide-brimmed hat. You could still see the lines where the curler pins had pressed down on her hair. And to make matters worse, today she’d somehow rigged her tiny drowsy-looking eyes so that she seemed to be double-lidded.
  “What’d you do to your eyes?”
  Kazue brought her hands up slowly to her eyelids.
  “Oh. These are called Elizabeth Eyelids.”
  She’d gotten hold of some beauty product that Japanese women glued to their eyelids to give them the extra fold they craved, because they thought it made their eyes look Western. She’d spied on one of the insider students attaching them to her eyes in the restroom. Just the very thought of Kazue holding that two-pronged toothpick-thin plastic wand up to her eye while she applied the device made my skin crawl. And then her skirt had shrunk so drastically that you could see halfway up her skinny thighs. She’d worked so hard at being attractive that she ended up looking more ridiculous than ever.
  The other girls in the class poked one another in the ribs when they saw Kazue and made no effort to hide their laughter. It made me sick just to think that others thought we were friends. I hadn’t minded so much when she’d just been the ugly know-it-all, but this new transformation was thanks to Yuriko, which made it all the worse.

A quote from translator Rebecca Copeland:

Grotesque is a difficult work. It is long. It includes a variety of narrative voices and narrative forms. The main narrator is untrustworthy; and the entire novel challenges concepts of truth and lies. Perhaps it is not unreasonable, then, that the translation as well participates in this narrative game by also appearing “truthful” but also somehow deceitful. In a way, paraphrasing Ryan Fraser (Underground Games: Surface Translation and the Grotesque), all translations are “grotesqueries.”

 

Despite finding Grotesque fascinating and extremely well-written, I decided to not keep it in my library because it's just too damn dark. However, I've noted many of the translated passages because I love Kirino's writing so much.