These pastiches, parodies, and hauntings are all brilliantly translatedwith all their uncanny intactby Asa Yoneda. I could have understood if the game offered a vision of a wonderful world more exciting than real life. In Fitting Room, a saleswoman attends day and night to a mysterious customer who refuses to leave a fitting room. . [5] It became the title story of a 2003 collection published by Kodansha. Motoya founded her own theater company and has also set aside time for various other endeavors, like hosting a radio show and a televised documentary series. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many users needs. And like so many arbitrary signifiers of taste, style, or quality, they are focused exclusively on a western tradition. They confront their stifled independence: velleities give way to keen yearnings, desires twist toward violence. Previously, her translated stories have appeared in GRANTA and CATAPULT . Youd just gotten braces, and you said the metal hurt and you couldnt eat anything. No, I said. Bodybuilder is the best example, and in An Exotic Marriage, a familiar notion of couples starting to look alike turns eerie. This is a game where you collect money?. No one in Yukiko Motoyas new story collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder, appears capable of seeing herself in the mirror. [22], Motoya continued writing and directing plays for her theatre company while also writing short stories and novels, and in 2006 she became the youngest person ever to win the Tsuruya Nanboku Memorial Award for Best Play, which she received for her play Snan (Distress). 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 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? At first, The Lonesome Bodybuilder appears most interested in chills and moods; I needed time for its feminism and its political threads to catch the light. New Worlds Forever Measured by the Old: On Burning Province by Michael Prior, Katherine M. Hedeen "), and dedicates herself to it, with considerable success. (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. A married couple begin to look like each other, and the wife wonders how she can prevent it. Between me and Senta, I mightend up swallowing him all in one big gulp.. In the opening story, a meek saleswoman whos taken up bodybuilding practices flexing, but drops the pose without having been able to look my mirror self in the eye. In another, a bored housewife notes that sometimes she looked in the mirror and was reminded of a blank postcard. Marriage, she concludes, has made her resemblance to paper even more notable than before. In these contexts, Motoyas characters come to recognize the possibilities theyve denied themselves. The collections longest story, An Exotic Marriage, is more of a novella, and explores physical transformation as a metaphor for the shifting of identities in a relationship. But Motoya belongs more to modern oddness than to a fabulist tradition. The mass movement of a migrating flock of . 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. Let the cat do it. Her novel Funuke domo kanashimi no ai o misero (Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers!) But what was soappealing about the insipid map that looked like a stage backdropand its ever-twinkling coins? Theres a Jungian undercurrent in Motoyas writing, which seems to prize self-actualization as a way to mendor endtroubled relationships. Small discs ofdifferent colors twinkled all across the map. In Yukiko Motoyas delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. But Motoya's unique vision is still worth experiencing, and Yoneda's translation provides a clear and beautiful . 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 . Read 734 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. . Yukiko Motoya so commented on her career and creative process during an interview for Granta. He is villainous without even the dignity of intention. Youve banked some money., Sure enough, there was a number at the lower-right-hand corner of the screen. I finished towel-dryingmy hair and stepped out onto the balcony to bring in the laundryId hung out that afternoon. Then I felt skinslacken, and bodies start to yield, and then I could no longer tellwhose sensations I was feeling. "In Yukiko Motoya's delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar . The Ductility of Person and Time in Saddiq Dzukogis Your Crib, My Qibla, Leslie Stonebraker No one in Yukiko Motoya's new story collection, . "You should be careful," her . He probably thought that once he and I became one,he would never again have to worry about being judged by others. Sharlene Teos Ponti recently tracked the codependent relationship between two teens, while Neel Patels If You See Me, Dont Say Hi was a collection of short stories that doubled as a study of longing. 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. I took a mouthful of grilled eel seasoned with plenty of sansho pepper. How History Claims Us: On Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley, Aumaine Rose Smith They may feel separated from others, but they also feel separated from themselves. [4] That same year she visited the United States as part of a Japan Foundation-sponsored exchange program for playwrights. I gave up and cleared the table andwent for a bath, but when I came back, my husband hadnt moved. [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. Meanwhile, the reader watches each transformation and stab at connection. [9] She was nominated a third time for her 2011 novel Nurui doku (Warm Poison), about a woman who has a relationship with a pathological liar claiming to be a former high school classmate. . and other data for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure, Uwano recommended this game, my husband said at last. 209 pages. So I ordered a fruit platter from room service, and chewed it all up and spat it out onto the plate, and gave it to you., The husband-like thingsvoice sounded indistinct, as if it were coming from behind a wall of water. Motoya's stories tend to include a few odd details and features -- often contrasting with the seeming . There is something pareidolic about the writing process. Okay. I turned on my heel and went back into the kitchen. Even as The Lonesome Bodybuilder approaches its conclusion, new and winding pathways unfurl. Motoyas emphases include tedious relationships, workplace gender dynamics, and the soporific entertainments and culinary distractions of our modern age. On Places Ive Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown, Art Edwards I guessed hemust be feeling needy. "An Exotic Marriage," a Kafkaesque depiction that shows how even those closest to us can wind up completely alien in the end, a disturbing sentiment that is also reflected in the final story, "The Straw Husband." There is a bit of twisted, violent dystopia in "Paprika Jiro" and anime-flavored . Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya (2018). Men and women enter into romances with shape-shifters. But it would have been suspicious for me to say no. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, Many unusual things happen in The Lonesome Bodybuilder, a new collection by the Japanese author Yukiko Motoya. I shivered, then looked up and saw there was an AC ventembedded in the ceiling right above my head. Some changes render you, paradoxically, more yourself. Motoyas prose is earnest and casual, as if the writer is trying to convince a friend of a persistent but invisible pest. A pulsing sense of anxiety pushes the story forward as readers are left to reconcile her male staffs tepid ignorance with her panicked interior monologue. In Front of Strangers I Sing: The Strange Intimacy of Paul Celan, Benjamin Hedin personalising content and ads, providing social media features and to The narrator of An Exotic Marriage notices that she and her husband are beginning to look alike, but her husbands investment in game shows is the greater threat to her happiness and autonomy. I thought. Her husbands jealousy is another form of misperception. In Yukiko Motoya's delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. Her varied work has resulted in numerous accolades, and, most recently, the release of The Lonesome Bodybuilder, the first book-length English translation of her fiction. Instead of responding, I looked down and nibbled a slice of pear. In the title story, a husband watches a boxing match and asks his wife what she thinks of his body. The course of that career certainly indicates a restless curiosity. Yukiko Motoya is a writer, playwright, and stage director. 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. One of the collections most active narrators is the curmudgeonly craftswoman at the center of The Dogs, the penultimate story. He has received fellowships from the Edward Albee Foundation and the Ucross Foundation. Sometimes the rules of the world change on the spot. The fact that I couldnt stop, even if I tried, was proof that it wasnt actually a matter of anything as benign as acting or pretending.. Motoya pushes the premise further: as the narrators body drastically changes, her husband doesnt see it. [30], In 2013 Motoya married the poet, lyricist and film director Kite Okachimachi. Even when she poses in front of him in a micro bikini, her hair now short, her body filled out and covered in tanning oil, he asks: Whats that? Snake ball, huh? I poked at a piece of grilled eel laid on the rice, and pictured a bright white ball covered in scales. Fun and funny . On Deluge by Leila Chatti, Anne Graue The collections longest story, An Exotic Marriage, centers on a woman who notices that her husbands eyes and mouth are sliding around on his face. 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?. Do you think hes too immature? () The writing itself is to be admired." Didnt that explain why I didnt much mind whether it was a husbandI was living with or something only resembling a husband? . You can have two slices of my steak if you give me some ofyour eel.. Characters change . A draft blows through the talesloneliness, the most spectral emotion. All rights reserved. What if thereends up being more of the bad? Readers who are familiar with Japanese folklore, manga, or anime will probably find some of the themes to be mundane - there is much reminiscent of Rumiko Takahashi in the more fantastic stories, like The Dogs or An Exotic Marriage. Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel. Yukiko Motoya, trans. My husband the snake opened hismouth and swallowed me headfirst, and I desperately resisted hissticky, moist membranes, but soon the inside of his body becamea pleasurable place to be. One woman tries to compensate for her husbands lack of confidence by listing all my own faults. A second character, an executive, wishes to speak her mind at a meeting but fears that she hasnt established herself among her colleagues as the kind of person who could say that sort of thing. The tales boil down to the problem of balancing empathy with self-assertionof both practicing kindness and expressing your own needs, and all while the people around you are behaving like wraiths or aliens. In "An Exotic Marriage," the collection's centerpiece, the narrator, Sen, marries a man who refuses to engage with the world. Motoya also discerns the way the pursuit of freedom can be corrupted into cruelty or madness. On The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy, Asa Drake Her eyes were focused on the booths cloud-glass partition, but her mouth was still chewing away steadily at the steak. Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. If the reader has trouble picturing this, there is a cartoon diagram to assist. I waited for something else to happen, but that was it. Although the stories are often funny, theyre not sarcastic or ironic, and Motoyas not really kidding. This normalization gives the stories their irony and their sense of being just a bit off, like a lingering scent of formaldehyde. was published in 2005. Matthew D. Rodrigues's writing has appeared in Quill & Quire, The Hedgehog Review, and Fandor. 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. Maybe partly because of the TV feature, the late-afternoon deli counters were thronged with people. Id expected marriage to be an even more constricting flowerpot than my previous relationships. THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER By Yukiko Motoya Translated by Asa Yoneda 224 pp. 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. I remembered that once, many years ago, Id asked Santa Claus for a present: to wake up and have the whole world to myself, she recalls as she wanders the ghost town. Do you know the story of the snake ball? Other extraordinary examples from the collection: A girlfriend challenges her boyfriend to a duel and turns into a miniskirt-wearing siren; a husband made of straw harps on his wife to take better care of their BMW. So, for example, the husband in 'The Straw Husband', in a relationship otherwise most like any other, is really made of straw ("yes, that straw, stalks of dried rice or wheat, plant matter used as fodder for farm animals, or for bedding -- tied into bundles and rolled into a human shape"), while the narrator of 'The Dogs' describes how: "I didn't like beds, so I slept standing up, leaning against the windowsill" (apparently every night). The Lonesome Bodybuilder (published as Picnic in the Storm in the UK .) 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. the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. by Michael Heller and James Salzman, Zach Savich Im not sure why. organisation Blurring the Obvious: Bluebeards First Wife by Ha Seong-Nan, Christopher R. Vaughan To get at the deeper themes of strained marriages, traditional gender roles and love, Motoya subverts tropes and allows her characters to inhabit bizarre and metaphorical trajectories. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the Settings & Account section. In the realms of Motoya, believable behavior is more destructive and upsetting than any surreal occurrence. 2023 Cond Nast. Okay, I heard a muffled voice say. You should be careful, her neighbor tells her. It was adapted into the 2007 Daihachi Yoshida film Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers!, starring Eriko Sato and Hiromi Nagasaku, which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Every time I got together with someone new, I got replanted, and the nutrients from the old soil disappeared without a trace. Like that actress from the movies., How did he split up with a person like that and end up marrying you?. I wasexpecting some cutting-edge visual effects, but what I saw wasan image representing what looked like oceans and continents,drawn in simple lines like in old Nintendo games. [23] An English version of her play Vengeance can Wait, translated by Kyoko Yoshida and Andy Bragen, premiered in 2008 at the Best of Boroughs Festival in New York City. [29] As of 2017 she is co-host of the Fuji TV documentary series 7 Rules. the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. Motoya Yukiko, general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author. 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 . 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. Nevertheless, she feels invisible because her husband never notices her. Facial features intermittently disassemble, prompting Sans panic. the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. But after four years, I hadnttried to escape from the soil that was my husband. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. . By suggesting the need for a shield within marriage, Motoya conveys the dysfunction she sees in the coexistence of men and women. Wilson Josephson is a young sapling spreading his roots in southern Minnesota. 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. These two stories stand out from the others, which, at times, are held back by traces of redundancy or ideas that are almost excessively legible. Marie Mockett takes umbrage, in her excellent Lit Hub essay Our Fairy Tales, Ourselves, with critics and philosophers whose pursuit of universal laws of narrative structure blind them to the expansive possibilities of literature. 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 . $16.95. . There was no response. Translated by Asa Yoneda. 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 . In The Straw Husband, the narrators husband is just that, straw, but his composition is less concerning than his inordinate devotion to his car. One woman puts it to her husband directly: You can stop being husband shaped now! Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. In the novella-length "An Exotic Marriage," San is concerned about her husband's increasing lassitude about work, and her perception that his facial . From Apocalypse to Apocalypso: On An Ecotopian Lexicon, Ryan Lackey The Dogs avoids such risks by dint of its elusiveness and subtlety. Husbands and Wives Magically Morph in a Japanese Story Collection, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/books/review/lonesome-bodybuilder-yukiko-motoya.html. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for $69 per month. Youre accommodating, San, and before you know itshe breaks off, as Sans features rearrange themselves to mirror her partners. Asa Yoneda. A woman trains as a bodybuilder, adding massive ropes of muscle to her back and shoulders, tripling the width of her neckand her husband doesnt notice. Lingerie? Back to the gym she goes. Hakone quenched her thirst with cold roasted green tea from the vending machine. Your email address will not be published. I dont remember where I read it. Reverberations and Divinations in Kazim Alis The Voice of Sheila Chandra, Peter Campion Unlike the alienation other characters face within the context of relationships, she is literally all alone, but this only strengthens her sense of self. Both women, at the service of their partners desires, are reshaped by othersan easy way to become a stranger to yourself in Motoyas world. The unpredictable narratives pair with curious and compelling imagery to create a palpable and inexplicable sense of wonder. Q&A, which is presented as the deathbed ravings of a beauty columnist, is a meta delirium of tips, callbacks to previous stories, and rage. He says his ex-wifes been sending him strange garbled emails recently, I said. The other stories are trim and propulsive, itching to move forward, using their surreal elements to interrogate assumptions about intimacy and the complacency of partnership. It seemed that all he was doing was almost robotically placing hisfinger on the discs. April 2021 Micro-Reviews, Amanda Auerbach . offers FT membership to read for free. 224 pp. Her books have been published or are forthcoming in French, Norwegian, Spanish, and Chinese, . () By the first few sentences of, "Like soap bubbles, several of these stories catch your eye, but the instant they are gone you forget about them. It settled to the floor in countless small clumps. Freed, he turns into a mountain peony. Men entered into me through my roots like nutrients dissolved in potting soil. His misperception becomes literal: he cant grasp whats right in front of him. She is typical of Motoyas women: conferring an excess of personhood on whomever or whatever is at hand, yearning to connect to something that isnt there. Asa Yoneda. cookies Do you remember, on our honeymoon, how I chewed up allthe fruit for you so you could eat it?, Sure. The option to explode a life or a story greatly appeals to her. In the darkness, my husband swiftly removed my pajama bottoms. 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. Motoyas characters tend to be housewives and service workers, and her tales revolve around intimate or faux-intimate relationships.

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