[2] After completing high school, Motoya moved to Tokyo to study acting, and won a voice acting role in the Hideaki Anno anime adaptation of Kare Kano, but switched her focus to writing after a teacher praised a short play Motoya wrote for the school's graduation ceremony. Poems That Linger: Peter Campions One Summer Evening at the Falls, Johannes Gransson On A Whole World: Letters from James Merrill, Nicholas Bredie Every time Inoticed myself acting as though that was who Id been all along,a chill went up my spine. (I want you to come out of that fitting room with a smile on your face! the attendant chirps, noting the slurping, roiling kind of sound emanating from behind the curtain.) Japanese novelist, playwright, and theatre director, "Yukiko Motoya takes a satirical look at the 'Super No-Flat', "Yusho Takiguchi, Yukiko Motoya share Akutagawa Prize while Bumpei Aoyama wins Naoki Prize", " ", "From violence to vulnerability, Yukiko Motaya enchants with 'The Lonesome Bodybuilder', "Yukiko Motoya's Surreal World of Alienated Characters", "Husbands and Wives Magically Morph in a Japanese Story Collection", "The Lonesome Bodybuilder: Stories by Yukiko Motoya tales of the unexpected", "Presenter Interview: The Playwright's Center of Minneapolis", "53rd Kishida Kunio Drama Award goes to Ryuta Horai and Yukiko Motoya in a double awarding", "Why I Can No Longer Look at a Picnic Blanket Without Laughing", "The Reason I Carry Biscuits to Offer to Young Boys", "Alexandra Kleeman recommends "The Lonesome Bodybuilder" by Yukiko Motoya", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yukiko_Motoya&oldid=1122580502, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using embedded infobox templates with the title parameter, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Articles with Japanese-language sources (ja), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, 2006 10th Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award, Best Play category. Motoyas is the perfect book for the reader whos seen it allwho is tired of predicting endings and hankers for a surprise. But what was soappealing about the insipid map that looked like a stage backdropand its ever-twinkling coins? Nevertheless, she feels invisible because her husband never notices her. He seemed not to realize that anything was amiss, and simplylooked at me with his terrifyingly wide-set eyes, and said, Are they all gone?. can lose themselves to mundanity and wrestle to reclaim their selfhood is best illustrated in the novella-length "An Exotic Marriage . . He has received fellowships from the Edward Albee Foundation and the Ucross Foundation. There was a tremor in my hand holding the paring knife. Ad Choices. Trumps performative macho is scaring voters in both parties away from women candidates. In "An Exotic Marriage," the collection's centerpiece, the narrator, Sen, marries a man who refuses to engage with the world. Every time I would ask, You really enjoy itthat much? hed say, Thats not what its about, in a curiously languid tone. [15], In 2016, on her fourth nomination, Motoya won the 154th Akutagawa Prize for her story Irui konin tan (Tales of Marriage to a Different Sort), in which a wife discovers that she and her husband look more and more alike as they grow older together. The ride can be anxious but never dull. But in a world that both values men and teaches men to value themselves so much more highly than their partners, any partnership seems doomed to disappoint. Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links, Twelve stories from collections originally published in Japanese in 2015 and 2016, "Her characters seem to be searching for the strangest, and most estranged, parts of themselves. . Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. Theres a Jungian undercurrent in Motoyas writing, which seems to prize self-actualization as a way to mendor endtroubled relationships. Asa Yoneda. . When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Unlike the alienation other characters face within the context of relationships, she is literally all alone, but this only strengthens her sense of self. I followed, but never having been very good at walking throughcrowds, I kept barging into peoples shoulders, and by the time I caught up, she had already joined the line for the steak bento. Her command of vivid detail comes through in close studies of perception and psychology, and in the conjuring up of outsized brutalities. . Banners positioned around the floor advertised the Beat the Heat Bento Expo. Small discs ofdifferent colors twinkled all across the map. The positioning of his features was deteriorating faster thanever. English translation copyright 2018 by Asa Yoneda. Our Final Words: A Review of Eternal Sentences by Michael McGriff, Katherine M. Hedeen I think?. In Yukiko Motoya's delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. Motoyas emphases include tedious relationships, workplace gender dynamics, and the soporific entertainments and culinary distractions of our modern age. As the strangeness mounts, San observes her identity as something willed and imposed. I heard a tinkling sound like coins dropping into a piggy bank, which Id been hearing constantly all evening. At other points, the couple are recast as ravenous snakes. The course of that career certainly indicates a restless curiosity. For the first time in months, his hand crept into my bed, undermy comforter. By the first few sentences of The Lonesome Bodybuilder, you know you're hearing the voice of a remarkable writer; by the end of "An Exotic Marriage," you're certain that Yukiko Motoya's shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you." --Financial Times "Motoya [has a] gift for making the ordinary magical." --Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture When the pair suffers their first fight, Tomokos husband collapseshis straw limbs crumble at her feetand she fantasizes about setting him on fire. Blurring the Obvious: Bluebeards First Wife by Ha Seong-Nan, Christopher R. Vaughan The same goes for San, whose face melts into new patterns. This really takes me back. On the screen, a quiz show was posing a question about an ad that had been on heavy rotation just after wed gotten married. Published in English by Soft Skull Press. [9][11] Though Nurui doku did not win the Akutagawa Prize, it won the 33rd Noma Literary New Face Prize. Matthew D. Rodrigues's writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, The Hedgehog Review, and Fandor. Asa Yoneda, the books translator, has signal-boosted a story collection whose off-kilter style strenuously upholds Motoyas stated mission. Motoya won the Noma Prize for New Writers for Warm Poison in 2011; the Kenzaburo Oe Prize for Picnic in the Storm in 2013 . With frank sincerity, Motoya makes the exhausted clichs of marriage and intimacy literal, and thus, energetically strange. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. In The Women, a citys female population contracts a virus that turns them into homicidal hotties. But I guess that cant be right. How could he even see straight? offers FT membership to read for free. Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Malleability can imply a womans weakness, or it can imply power. Hearing Hakonessnake-ball story, I finally felt that something that had beencloudy to me had become clear. He says his ex-wifes been sending him strange garbled emails recently, I said. This sense of unpredictability traverses the entire collection, and yet the stories rarely seem desultory. The answers to questions like that, for example. It seemed that all he was doing was almost robotically placing hisfinger on the discs. . The pears?. (He will no doubt be prepared to be swung as hard as it takes to protect your honor.) The husbands are oppressively thoughtless, moody, domineering. Such endings introduce a kind of ontological flexibility into the very structure of the storythey bring an essential playfulness to the work that is much more engaging and absorbing than a more rigid finale. Her first story, ""Eriko to zettai,"" appeared in the literary magazine Gunzo in 2002. Paper, $16.95. In The Straw Husband, the narrators husband is just that, straw, but his composition is less concerning than his inordinate devotion to his car. Translated by Asa Yoneda. Everyday objects and places are transformed into odd salves for the hyper-fractured lives of these characters, adding a mischievous streak to The Lonesome Bodybuilder. Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group. was published in 2005. The zelkovas planted in a clump justbeyond the railing were overgrown with green leaves that lookedlike a neglected hairdo. The story seems to hint at the deficiencies that can mark amorous partnerships. I saw it on the local news the other day. And in The Dogs, the protagonist gains a sort of freedom, but this sunders threads both social and psychic; something ambiguously terrible rises in their place. On Exclusions by Noah Falck, Jim Johnstone No, its not like that. The weird garbled messages?, No, but you can just tell these things sometimes., Huh. Whenever Id gotten close to someone in the past, Id had the feeling that little by little I was being replaced. I didnt say what I was thinking, but he must have sensed it. Even the missteps attest to Motoyas fictive mandate: to be unburdened by rules and restraints. MEDIA REVIEWS. Weight: 196 g. Dimensions: 196 x 126 x 26 mm. Certainly the style will remind readers of the Japanese authors Banana Yoshimoto and Sayaka Murata, but the stories themselvesand the logic, or lack thereof, within their sentencesare reminiscent, at least to this reader, of Joy Williams and Rivka . $16.95. He probably thought that once he and I became one,he would never again have to worry about being judged by others. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. As a leashed man miserably admits, just before being yanked to mortal combat, This is all because of the desires of men like us. Such a desire, for a more exciting lover, has exciting effects: the women demand duels, then take their husbands and boyfriends down by the river to kill them. For instance, in Fitting Room, a boutique employee, faced with a customer who wont leave the changing room, remembers that the fitting rooms were moveable, on wheels. Motoya wastes no time: the employee wheels the fitting room and customer out of the shop. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for $69 per month. by the end of "An Exotic Marriage," you're certain that Yukiko Motoya's shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you." --Financial Times "Motoya . Motoya was born in Hakusan, Ishikawa. I was feigning calm, but my voice came outhigher than normal. I thought. She finds a trainer, and a good deal at a nearby fitness club (a rather unlikely "100 Free Sessions Until You See the Results You Want ! When I thought about whether the thing that had started tomove on top of me was my husband or just something like him, Ifelt a terrible dread and kept my eyes firmly shut. Yukiko Motoya's imagination is wild and rich in her eleven whimsical short stories in this book. Unearthing Memory and Reclaiming the Feminine in Shanta Lee Ganders GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA, Chris Via In I Called You by Name, a woman in a business meeting is plagued by the certainty that only she can see a figure lurking in the shadows. Asa Yoneda. Many highlight the intense and uncomfortable strangeness of having a body that can change so much and so often; most feature narrators that are terminally placid in the face of escalating terror; and almost every story includes at least one truly terrible man. She has won numerous Japanese literary and dramatic awards, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Mishima Yukio Prize, the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, the Kishida Kunio Drama Award, and the Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award. The Lonesome Bodybuilder The question of why she reassembles him looms large, and implies a sort of complicity in misery, an experience common among Motoyas characters. I dont remember where I read it. You can have two slices of my steak if you give me some ofyour eel.. At the story's beginning, he seems like a . Margaryta Golovchenko. So you collect the money, and then what?, When youve collected enough, you can buy your own land., You buy your own land, and then? San isnt the only woman in Motoyas stories who feels neglected and vaguely undefined. $16.95. On Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing by Julie Marie Wade, Matt McBride Take whatever form you want to be! The distending body of my husband exploded with a loud pop. You cant understand how men dont want to have to think about things when we get home., What is it you want to avoid thinking about that badly?. Her husbands features are always shifting on his face, and soon he resembles, variously, a monster, a snake, a new creature, his wife, and then, finally, a mountain peony. Like that actress from the movies., How did he split up with a person like that and end up marrying you?. By the first few sentences, you know you're hearing the voice of a remarkable writer; by the end of [the story] "An Exotic Marriage", you're certain that Yukiko Motoya's shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you' Financial Times 'Delightful . By suggesting the need for a shield within marriage, Motoya conveys the dysfunction she sees in the coexistence of men and women. Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window). In the collection's longest and scariest story, "An Exotic Marriage," Motoya, through her narrator, lands a flurry of punches against the oppressive domesticity . -, "Like a bouquet of exotic flowers, her stories are varied and full of surprise, starting out with mundane situations and then turning strange in a way that feels uniquely Japanese. Wilson Josephson is a young sapling spreading his roots in southern Minnesota. How could he even see straight? One night, after dinner, I was surprised to notice my husband engrossedin his iPad rather than the variety show playing on the TV. Wed found a table in the seating area of the department stores food hall. He is villainous without even the dignity of intention. Any reader pursuing concrete examples of nimble writing and unconventional resolutions could do a hell of a lot worse than Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder, a collection of short stories that mangle and deform the familiar until it becomes something both wildly unexpected and deeply welcome. [10] Motoya's 2009 novel Ano ko no kangaeru koto wa hen (That Girl's Got Some Strange Ideas) was nominated for the 141st Akutagawa Prize. In the title story, a husband watches a boxing match and asks his wife what she thinks of his body. Arent you worried? During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. Its also the collections penultimate entry. Or: What really would have happened if Id gotten on the roller coaster that day? Left to their own devices, these characters may have been content with the status quo, but the universe Motoya builds taunts them with their secret motivations until theyre forced to confront them publicly. Do you know the story of the snake ball? Motoya also discerns the way the pursuit of freedom can be corrupted into cruelty or madness. Motoya won the Noma Prize for New Writers for Warm Poison in 2011; the Kenzaburo Oe Prize for Picnic in the Storm in 2013; the Mishima Yukio Prize for How She Learned to Love Herself in 2014; and Japan's most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016.--This text refers to the mp3_cd edition. 2023 Cond Nast. But it only applies when the snakes consume each other at the same rate. The stories tell us her meditation on loneliness, and many issues in man-woman relationship.The most impressive story is An Exotic Marriage in which the wife felt that she was losing her identity in the marriage, and her husband started But it would have been suspicious for me to say no. At the end of a story with an aesthetic solution, the narrative action is suspendedrather than resolvedand the author leaves the audience with a natural image that resists interpretation. Many of the characters seek lives yet unlived, or lives once lived but later forgotten. The 11 short stories in this collection, translated by Asa Yoneda, range in tone from ominous thrillers to lighthearted folktales, but they always seem to return to a depletion of self. Hakone swiftly referred to the floor guide and said, This way, and took off without sparing a glance at the stalls she passed. Snake ball, huh? I poked at a piece of grilled eel laid on the rice, and pictured a bright white ball covered in scales. [6][7], In 2002, prompted by a magazine editor's invitation, Motoya made her fiction debut with the short story Eriko to zettai (Eriko and Absolutely). It featured eel sourced from the Shimanto River, Lake Hamana,the Mikawa region, and Miyazaki Prefecture, grilled bothwith sauce and without. Delightful . The executive who holds her tongue at the meeting also sees, or dreams that she sees, faces in inanimate objects; she suffers from a condition called pareidolia, in which the mind perceives illusory patterns in random stimuli. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. Mud Stuck to our Shoes: On The Insistence of Harm by Fernando Valverde, Edward Derby Perhaps the most resonant stories are those about marriage; Motoya (a playwright as well as an author) excels in putting husband and wife through unusual trials. By then I was actively feeding my bodyto him to be devoured. personalising content and ads, providing social media features and to Sign up for our mailing list to get the latest updates on happenings at Maudlin House, and product discounts! and then the short story "The Exotic Marriage" is a whopping eighty five pages long. The stories are funny and creepy; they have a campfire vibe, a brush of the moonless night. Tomokos animosity toward her straw husband is as brief as it is startling. That only made the boundary between the skin of ourentwined bodies even hazier. Motoya Yukiko, general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author. The Grandfather of New Nature Writing Was a Bird-Loving Poet. In The Lonesome Bodybuilder, the pest is always a yawning disconnect between people. () Motoyas talent for voice informs her first-person narrators, both female and male, who have a genuine vulnerability and convincing matter-of-factness as they veer into the fantastic." Coins.. This criticism becomes pointed when juxtaposed with the final story in the collection, The Straw Husband, about a newlywed woman named Tomoko who is unfailingly devoted to her husband, a man made of straw. The Ductility of Person and Time in Saddiq Dzukogis Your Crib, My Qibla, Leslie Stonebraker Motoya's stories tend to include a few odd details and features -- often contrasting with the seeming . Copyright 2018 by Yukiko Motoya. When he notices that the fight has attracted her attention, he accuses her of lusting after the boxers and their muscled bodies. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. New York, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2018. The wife tries her best to boost his ego, fails, then decides to take up bodybuilding. Soft Skull Press. Motoyas women exist most vividly in their own heads, a state of being that often leaves them feeling alone in a crowd. Here, take it.. and other data for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure, I decide who I am, and never consider other possibilities. In another story, I Called You by Name, an ad exec compares her past and present, recalling her earlier determination to never allow herself to be bound by anything as common as common sense.. Lying on the couch, they prompt the strange impression of a new kind of organism that would die if it exerted itself in any way. There is acid in Motoyas surrealism: these women will put up with anything! We have to accept that were responsible for the physical effects theyre experiencing! a man yells, as the narrators girlfriends lips produce their own lipstick; the narrator tearfully euthanizes her. The fact that I couldnt stop, even if Itried, was proof that it wasnt actually a matter of anything as benign as acting or pretending. Claire Crews [30], In 2013 Motoya married the poet, lyricist and film director Kite Okachimachi. Fun and funny . These men are usually husbands, as in the eponymous story that opens the collection, in which the protagonist discovers bodybuilding, becomes enamored with it to the point of obsession, and rapidly transforms both her body and her personality. At face value, the stories are fun and funny to read, but weightier questions lurk below the surface. Histeeth must have been in their right place, because they made achamping sound as he chewed. Authenticity is a reclamation project, and her characters go to great lengths to prove their agency. Winner of the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, Picnic in the Storm is the English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearless young writers. Some Googling I did found out that this was actually published as a novella . . But I guess that cant be right. Snake ball! By the first few sentences, you know you're hearing the voice of a remarkable writer; by the end of [the story] "An Exotic Marriage", you're certain that Yukiko Motoya's shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you., Financial Times These uncanny stories surprise, unnerve and haunt, Spectator Incredibly enjoyable stories, Daily Mail . Hakone quenched her thirst with cold roasted green tea from the vending machine. On Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal, Lisa Hiton [12][13] Motoya subsequently won the 7th Kenzaburo Oe Prize for her 2012 collection Arashi no pikunikku (Picnic in the Storm),[14] and the 27th Mishima Yukio Prize for her 2013 novel Jibun wo suki ni naru houhou. Why was I so happy to be married to a bunch of straw?, she wonders to herself, before finally reassembling him. Motoyas eerie touches allow the characters to embrace inconvenient and irrational parts of themselves; at moments when self-doubt is making them flounder, these otherworldly intrusions act as a corrective force. But Id like us to stay as separate people for a little longer., I mean, getting married, that means swallowing everything about the other person, the good things and the bad. Then you collect those, so you can bank money again. Like the work of Aimee Bender and Robert Walser, many of these stories, however whimsical on the surface, possess a sense of dread at their core. This is a game where you collect money?. His face was barely maintaining a form that could even berecognized as human.