Many young people today forego much of this, either through personal choice or due to economic restraints. Japan, as much as any other nation in the developed world, operates by a set of rules commonly referred to as: marriage, university, promotion, pregnancy, and mortgage (possibly not in that order). She is a cog in the convenience store machine, as much a part of the furniture as the fluorescent bulbs and door jingles (even the Japanese title, ‘ Konbini Ningen’ or ‘Convenience Store Human’, reflects this with clarity: Keiko is not a woman, she is a human part of the store machine).Īs a result, this cog has never managed to fit the greater machine we call ‘modern life’. She is entirely content with her life, and has never asked for anything more not a better job, more money, nor even a partner to share her life with. She has seen eight managers – whom she refers to only by their numbers – and more co-workers than she could count. Keiko Furukura is thirty-six and has worked part-time in the same convenience store for eighteen years (as, in fact, has her creator).
I have become a functioning part of the world, rotating in the time of day called morning.” I am one of those cogs, going round and round. “It is the start of another day, the time when the world wakes up and the cogs of society begin to move. Read More: Review of Earthlings by Sayaka Murata Convenience Store Woman
That wonderful convenience store woman helped me get my best foot forward as I started my commute into the centre of Tokyo, and I’ll always be grateful to her for it.Īs I devoured page after page of Convenience Store Woman I imagined its setting to be that same convenience store in Inagi-shi, and its wonderfully odd protagonist, Keiko, to be my same convenience store woman with her clock wound back a decade or so. She said it all with a toothy smile that some might call robotic or automated, but I was lulled to joy by each and every morning, rain or shine. She would greet me time and again with the same rising and falling pitch of her voice as she almost sang, ‘ ohayou gozaimasu!’ The phrase beginning low, reaching a squeaky midpoint and at last dropping to a near growl at the end.
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