The stories in Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata introduce you to a new normal based on a fascination with the use of the human body and the way you care for it.
Location: Japan
Life Ceremony synopsis
With Life Ceremony, the incomparable Sayaka Murata is back with her first collection of short stories ever to be translated into English. In Japan, Murata is particularly admired for her short stories, which are sometimes sweet, sometimes shocking, and always imbued with an otherworldly imagination and uncanniness.
In these twelve stories, Murata mixes an unusual cocktail of humor and horror to portray both the loners and outcasts as well as turning the norms and traditions of society on their head to better question them. Whether the stories take place in modern-day Japan, the future, or an alternate reality is left to the reader’s interpretation, as the characters often seem strange in their normality in a frighteningly abnormal world. In “A First-Rate Material,” Nana and Naoki are happily engaged, but Naoki can’t stand the conventional use of deceased people’s bodies for clothing, accessories, and furniture, and a disagreement around this threatens to derail their perfect wedding day. “Lovers on the Breeze” is told from the perspective of a curtain in a child’s bedroom that jealously watches the young girl Naoko as she has her first kiss with a boy from her class and does its best to stop her. “Eating the City” explores the strange norms around food and foraging, while “Hatchling” closes the collection with an extraordinary depiction of the fractured personality of someone who tries too hard to fit in.
In these strange and wonderful stories of family and friendship, sex and intimacy, belonging and individuality, Murata asks above all what it means to be a human in our world and offers answers that surprise and linger.
Book review
“What could be more natural than making people into clothes and furniture after they die?”
Do you find sweaters made of human hair and furniture made of bones distasteful? I mean, it would be such a waste to throw away corpses of the dead instead of using them. Why is goat hair (cashmere) okay, but human hair is not? The first story in Life Ceremony is about the wonderful world in which human materials are used. A First-Rate Material is a powerful story that makes you take a better look at your own body: are you taking good enough care of your body so that one day it can be used as a material?
Sayaka Murata changes an aspect – a thing that is seen as normal – of the world and writes a story about how the odd one out deals with it. The stories lead to interesting thoughts and make you think about how you yourself deal with the themes raised in the stories.
The power of food
Take for example the second story, A Magnificent Spread. In this story you can choose between normal food, food from the future, and food from the magical city of Dundilas. The question here is whether it is true that if you eat the food someone makes for you, that you believe in the world they live in? Can you be brainwashed by the food you eat? Compare this to the vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free diets and ask yourself if you are also ingesting a lifestyle.
I was amused by this second story: everyone’s normal is different. Both stories I mentioned above are about different normals, diversity and having a hard time understanding the other. Lifestyle as described in this story can also be seen as culture, traditions and religion. Dinner in A Magnificent Spread was saved by the husband, whose actions made me laugh out loud.
Organ puzzle
Other stories also deal with “new normals,” such as new kinds of families, two children with an adult human pet, and the life ceremony from which the collection of stories takes its name. It seems that the author has made it her mission to spread a certain fascination with the human body. Puzzle is very memorable because of the alienation the narrator feels with her own body. Its polar opposite, Hatchling, does the same with personality.
Recommendation
I especially like the longer stories in Life Ceremony. Sayaka Murata’s stories and books resonate with me, but that won’t be true for everyone. If you loved Earthlings and Convenience Store Woman, you will love this collection of stories as well. If you were disgusted by the cannibalism and sexual content in Earthlings, then I recommend skipping Life Ceremony because you’ll find more of it here.
Interested?
Pre-order your copy of Life Ceremony from Amazon (available 5 July 2022).
Book details
Title: Life Ceremony
Author: Sayaka Murata
Translator (from Japanese): Ginny Tapley Takemori
Language: English
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Pages: 256
ISBN (13): 9780802159588
Publication date: 5 July 2022
About the author and translator
Sayaka Murata is the author of many books, including Earthlings and Convenience Store Woman, winner of the Akutagawa Prize. Murata has been named a Freeman’s “Future of New Writing” author and a Vogue Japan Woman of the Year.
Ginny Tapley Takemori lives in rural Japan and has translated fiction by more than a dozen early modern and contemporary Japanese writers, ranging from such early literary giants as Izumi Kyoka and Okamoto Kido, to contemporary bestsellers Ryu Murakami and Miyabe Miyuki. Her translations have also appeared in Granta, Freeman’s, Words Without Borders, and a number of anthologies. Her translation of Tomiko Inui’s The Secret of the Blue Glass was shortlisted for the Marsh Award, and her translation of Sayaka Murata’s Akutagawa prize-winning novel Convenience Store Woman was one of the New Yorker’s best books of 2018 and Foyle’s Book of the Year 2018.
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
