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Review: Natsuo Kirino - Grotesque (2003)
Very interesting book that was not at all what I expected. This was not a crime novel as I had expected. Rather, it was an exploration of people and personalities who were connected by crime. I would recommend this book to people who want a psychological read. But be warned that this book can be dark.
Spoilers.
Story
The story was presented to us as testimonies from different characters who were all related to the crime. I will try to go over the story in chronological order.
The narrator (whose name is never revealed to us) grew up hating her younger sister Yuriko, who was always fawned over for her stunning looks. They were half-Japanese, half-Swiss. When their father’s business failed, the family moved to Switzerland, but the narrator stayed in Japan with her grandfather, desperate to be away from her sister. She studied hard to attend the prestigious Q high school.
In Switzerland, Yuriko began to explore her sexuality at age 15, first with her uncle. After Yuriko and the narrator’s mother committed suicide and their father’s pregnant mistress moved in, Yuriko decided to move back to Japan, where she’d live with Johnson and his Japanese wife. Though Yuriko was not as smart, she was still admitted to Q high school, likely for her looks.
In high school, the narrator had two acquaintances. One was Mitsuru, the smartest girl in her grade who also came from a humble background. The other acquaintance was Kazue, a rigid and idealistic girl. As for Yuriko, she befriended Takashi Kijima, the son of a Professor, who became her pimp. Yuriko and Takashi became very rich from her prostitution activities. Yuriko was also sleeping with Johnson, her guardian. Johnson’s wife found out about them and kicked out Yuriko and divorced Johnson. As well, Kijima’s father found out about Yuriko and Takashi’s prostitution activities and they were expelled. Both left their homes.
In the present day, our characters were linked together due to two murders. Yuriko and Kazue were both murdered by Zhang.
After high school Yuriko became a high class hostess/escort (it isn’t very clear). However, as her looks faded, she had to resort to prostitution. She had a child with Johnson, but she never cared for him. Yuriko was eventually killed by Zhang, though the details of her death are contested. Zhang insisted that Yuriko’s soul called to die, though the court documents state that they had fought over money.
Kazue’s father passed when she was in university, and so she became the breadwinner for her mother and younger sister. She attended university and in the present day had become the assistant manager to the research department of G corporation. By night, however, she turned to prostitution. She used to work at a call girl company but was fired, and also resorted to streetwalking. Zhang claims that he didn’t kill Kazue, but the court documents indicated that he did.
Mitsuru had attended Tokyo University and become a doctor. Her husband was also a doctor. However, she had joined a cult and murdered several people. In the present day, she had only just been released from prison, and had contacted the narrator. It seemed that by the end of the book, she had reverted to the clever self that she was in high school.
Zhang was the murderer who hailed from China. In the book, he had given a testimony about his background in China and how he had come to Japan. He claimed that he came from an impoverished background, and gave a more sympathetic view of his life. However, court documents and testimonies from people who spoke to him indicated that he was someone not to be sympathized with. He had come from a good background and threw that away, forced his sister into prostitution, etc. He claimed that he had only killed Yuriko and not Kazue.
The narrator lived a simple life. She’d gone to university and in the present day worked at a company. She lived in her grandfather’s apartment, while he was in an elder home. She had attended the court hearings for Zhang out of curiosity but did not sympathize him. At the court hearings, she bumped into Mitsuru, and also Kijima. Kijima had Yurio with him, the son of Yuriko and Johnson. Though the narrator had shown disdain for nearly everyone, she took an instant liking to Yurio. When Yurio told her to consider prostitution so that she could buy a computer for him, and she slapped him, but continued to show love for him.
What was this novel trying to say? I think it was a heavy look into class and women in society through different points of view. The themes were definitely very heavy.
Writing & Translation
The English version I’d read was translated by Rebecca L. Copeland. It was alright. There were times when it was a little corny. The reference to the Incredible Hulk at the very end of the book took me by surprise because it was kind of random. But overall I think it gave us a dreary atmosphere that I think Kirino would have wanted the reader to experience.
The writing portrayed as testimony was pretty interesting, especially because several of the characters were unreliable narrators. In the first perspective switch, when we got to read Yuriko’s diary, the narrator had said that she had taken the liberty of correcting some things. So whether or not we were getting Yuriko’s full story is up for debate. It’s the version that the narrator saw fit. For Zhang, his testimony showed a very tough life, but afterwards, we saw many people directly contradicting things in his story, showing that he was not as good of a person as he wanted to appear. I initially thought that perhaps Kazue’s diary was most true, but I also recall that she had written them for Takashi, so perhaps she wanted to portray a good side of herself, even if it seemed far from that to us. Perhaps the point was that all of these accounts were what these characters wanted the public to see, whether for themselves for others.
Characters
Narrator
For most of the book, our narrator was full of hatred, particularly hatred towards Yuriko, but that set the tone for her outlook on life.
The narrator refused to admit it, but she had a big inferiority complex compared to Yuriko. Her mother acknowledged it, but given her mother’s limited power in the family, she didn’t do much about it. The narrator always called Yuriko a monster because her beauty could not be humanly possible. The narrator also viewed all of Yuriko’s actions as deceitful or negative in one way or another.
Thus, the narrator was overjoyed at the idea of staying in Japan alone without her family. She often said that those days when her family was in Switzerland and she lived with her grandpa were her happiest days. I don’t think she particularly cared for her grandpa. I think she was neutral about him, and just learned to manipulate him so that she could have the life she wanted without being bothered. As for her parents, I don’t think the narrator had strong feelings for them other than perhaps pity for her mother. Sometimes she said her mother was proud of giving birth to Yuriko, but I think the narrator did notice that she felt weak in her own family.
The narrator was somewhat of a bully towards Kazue. She felt that Kazue was silly for not being able to read the atmosphere, for believing she could ever work to be one of the popular elites at Q high school. The narrator entertained herself by tormenting Kazue, and encouraging her to do things that would embarrass herself. In those moments, I realized that the narrator was so nasty and full of hate for the world. At the same time, the narrator seemed to hold some respect for Mitsuru because Mitsuru was able to keep everything control. She had good grades, wasn’t targeted by the elites, and could hide her humble background. I don’t think the narrator considered Mitsuru a friend, but she respected her. That being said, the narrator began to hate Mitsuru when Mitsuru’s mother got into a relationship with her grandfather. The narrator felt that her life was being turned upside down. Her grandfather was using up all of the money to look good, and now Mitsuru’s mother wanted them to be one big happy family, which the narrator rejected.
The narrator’s adulthood was fairly uneventful. She barely ever had any contact with Yuriko. However, in Yuriko’s diary, she mentioned that in her adulthood, her sister would sometimes call her because she new Yuriko was in a bad spot and it made her happy to know that. Otherwise, she worked at a job where she was on occasion harassed by coworkers (seen as unfortunately normal in this book), and her grandfather lived in an elder care facility. She was not wealthy, and that was why she continued to live in her grandfather’s home.
The narrator said that she had attended the court hearings because she was curious about Zhang. He had compared himself to a movie star, and the narrator was very disappointed to see it was not the case. I forget the details but I think when she was questioned by a reporter, she thought that he had definitely done it. I wonder if despite her inferiority about her looks, that she also gave in to biases based on looks.
The narrator was not interested in reconnected with Mitsuru and Takashi but just went along for the ride. But she was instantly taken by Yurio’s beauty, and especially so after finding out that he was blind and would thus not be able to judge her looks. She lied about having enough money to buy Yurio a computer because she wanted to be close to him so badly.
The narrator found herself surprisingly moved by Kazue’s journal. Soon after, she received news that her grandfather had died, and so she wouldn’t even be able to keep the apartment. She revealed to Yurio that she barely had money, just her emergency savings. Yurio suggested he go out on the street and earn money like his mother, and she slapped him. Obviously, it’s an offensive thing to say, and yet, the narrator said that she saw a brightness in Yurio.
As much as the narrator denied it, she held a bit inferiority complex to Yuriko. Her coping mechanism was to consider Yuriko the mutation in their family, for it was impossible that one sister could be so beautiful and the other could be so plain. Though her grandfather’s words perhaps also comforted her a bit, saying that it was in their family genes to not look like each other, for the narrator’s mother did not look like her father (the narrator’s grandfather), and the narrator didn’t look like her mother. Because the narrator was afraid of being compared to Yuriko, she withdrew from society as much as she could. At Q high school, she wasn’t even the victim of bullying, she seemed to somehow remove herself from the equation entirely.
The narrator claimed she was happy with her normal life, her life away from men because all men disappointed her and disgusted her. We saw people at her workplace say disgusting things, and she stood up for herself a little. And yet, things changed when she met Yurio. Yurio was the only male person she’d ever been positive about, and possibly to an unreasonable extent considering how Yurio had offended her and yet she was still so smitten. Despite the narrator removing herself from societal norms as much as she could, she still fell victim to the power of looks.
Yuriko Hirata
Yuriko was the narrator’s sister. From the narrator’s point of view, Yuriko was some kind of otherworldly creature but in a bad way, beauty to the point of monstrosity. The narrator characterized her as dumb, incapable, every single bad thing.
From Yuriko’s diaries, we definitely saw a more sympathetic character, even if the narrator claims she corrected some parts of it. The inferiority complex seemed one-sided as Yuriko had never hated her sister as her sister hated Yuriko. Of course, that is the privilege, since Yuriko would have been treated well enough to not realize that.
But because of her beauty even from a young age, Yuriko had a different outlook on life. When she was ten years old, she met Johnson, who was already an adult. And at that time, she’d already felt that Johnson was interested in her. In her mind, Johnson was telling her to “hurry and grow up” and Yuriko told him to wait for her. Yuriko’s first sexual encounter was with her uncle Karl. They had a sexual relationship during the time she was in Switzerland, which was a secret from everyone, though Yuriko had deduced that her father’s mistress could sense the vibes.
Yuriko said that her mother was the person she loved the most. While the narrator showed no feelings towards her mother’s death, Yuriko claimed to be more heartbroken. I’m not sure what to make of that, but I am inclined to believe that Yuriko did love her mother. The narrator once said that Yuriko would always answer to their mother because she wanted the world to know that someone ugly like their mother give birth to someone so beautiful like Yuriko, that Yuriko wanted the world to know she was so much more beautiful than her family. But I can see that being the narrator overthinking, and that Yuriko just wanted love. Yuriko said that their mother was the conscience of the entire family, including their father and Karl. Once their mother died, the family fell apart and dispersed.
Yuriko was enrolled into Q high school as an ‘exception.’ Basically I think students who had studied abroad were given an academic exception. She clearly was not smart enough, but most characters deduced that Professor Kijima thought she was pretty and let her in. More on that later.
Yuriko told Takashi that she was just at Q high school for sex, and so he pimped her out. They became very rich that way, right under the nose of Kijima senior.
Yuriko stayed with Johnson while in Japan. As we know, he was interested in her from a young age, and they did start a sexual affair, Johnson’s wife unaware. Johnson’s wife was so eager to be the good Japanese wife. She treated Yuriko very well because she knew Johnson liked Yuriko and she wanted Johnson to like her. I think Johnson saw their relationship as something of a thrill. He liked sleeping with Yuriko, and he also loved hearing about her sexual adventures. He didn’t show jealousy, he was just really excited about it. So Johnson definitely objectified her, only seeing her as a sex object. Johnson’s wife found out about the affair and was very upset. I think she made it out of the divorce decently.
Yuriko was kicked out of school after her prostitution was discovered by Kijima. She and Takashi lived together for a bit; Takashi was gay so they were not in a relationship. But eventually she moved away and had her own career. The only man she’d slept with regularly for her entire life was Johnson. It was Johnson who took responsibility of their child since Yuriko wanted nothing to do with him.
Kazue especially emphasized the fact that Yuriko became very ugly as an old woman because of her Western genes. Yuriko just accepted this. Yuriko in general seemed a very go with the flow person. More on that later.
The accounts of Yuriko’s death differed between Zhang’s testimony and the court documents. I’m getting my facts mixed up, but I think Yuriko wanted to charge Zhang more money because of his incest kink and she died because they fought over money. Though later on, Zhang told Kazue that he’d killed Yuriko because Yuriko had wanted to die and was ready for it, so he just helped her along.
Like I said, Yuriko seemed a go with the flow kind of woman. I think she never really had much ambition. I think some said that Yuriko lived because of men, but she also decayed because of men. I think at one point, a character also said that she liked sex but hated men. In any case, Yuriko was sexualized from a very young age, and I think it warped her perception of herself. All the older men were only interested in her for her looks, and she was eager to respond to that, because that was the only way that she felt validated. Only when she was having sex did she feel like she had worth, because her beauty was the only thing people ever saw her for. She wasn’t smart, nobody ever complimented her for her personality.
I don’t think Yuriko and Johnson had strong feelings for them, just that he was someone she could continue to get sex from. But she didn’t care about anything else. He provided for her, I guess, but she also wanted nothing to do with Yurio. I think she figured that if she had a child, she couldn’t continue her lifestyle.
Yuriko spent her life in the prostitution business, and she knew that as she grew old and had to sink to streetwalking, that she would eventually be killed by a john. Still, she kind of let it happen. I think she knew it was coming for her.
I think Yuriko was probably more insightful than people would have thought. I felt that at times she was more insightful than Kazue, because Kazue was idealistic, whereas Yuriko was just putting the world into context the way she saw it. She just didn’t realize that there was anything for her in the world other than sex.
Jan Maher
Jan was the narrator and Yuriko’s father. The narrator was neutral about him, but he definitely was not a good person. In many of the Western Male – Japanese Female relationships in this book, the men were selfish, and the women were very submissive. Jan and Sachiko were one such case. Jan did things his own way, and Sachiko just followed. Jan probably also held some racist beliefs about Japan vs. Western culture.
After he went to Switzerland, Jan began to have an affair with a worker at his factory, a Turkish girl. I don’t remember if Sachiko knew. But in any case, Jan had no feelings for his wife. Yuriko had even wanted to accuse her father of killing their mother. Everyone knew it wasn’t true, but to Yuriko, it would have felt good to blame their father who had never shown much love to Sachiko. Before long, Jan had even moved his mistress into their house because she was pregnant.
Jan didn’t know about the sexual relationship between his brother Karl and Yuriko. Though Karl acted all apologetic, he still did it. That being said, I think Yuriko realized that that relationship wasn’t going to last because of those conflicting feelings.
In the present day, the narrator tried to call her father to ask for money, but he could barely speak Japanese. So after Yuriko left for Japan, Jan basically had no contact with his two elder daughters.
Sachiko Hirata
Sachiko was the narrator and Yuriko’s mother. The narrator painted Sachiko as somewhat being both proud and afraid of their daughter. I don’t know that that’s true, I think the narrator was just including Sachiko to help her own narrative, which is what kids do.
Sachiko was definitely poorly treated by her husband. She hated making Western food for him. When they went to Switzerland, Sachiko exacted her own ‘revenge’ by making Japanese food. It was the only way she could express herself, because otherwise she was confined to the role of a perfect housewife, as many Japanese women are.
As an outsider, I think it was obvious that Sachiko was extremely lonely and neglected. She took sleeping pills to commit suicide, and the daughters considered that the cause of dispersal of their family.
Grandpa
The narrator stayed with her grandpa when her family was in Switzerland. He had been caught committing some scams relating to bonsai trees, and he was very much obsessed with them. The narrator was mostly neutral about him, which actually appeared positive. He was someone who was consistent, I guess.
The narrator started to be very bothered when her grandpa met Mitsuru’s mother and started to try to dress up to impress her. He started to sell all of his bonsai trees. The narrator was very upset that he, like everyone around them, was so changed by sexual desire.
Mitsuru’s mother and the narrator’s grandpa had lived together for a while. I don’t remember the details, but I think the grandpa fell ill, and then Mitsuru’s mother abandoned him. In the present day, he was in a senior home, senile and not really right of mind. His death at the end of the book threw the narrator and Yurio’s life into trouble as they would have to vacate the premises.
Yurio
Yurio was Johnson and Yuriko’s son. He was astoundingly beautiful, but was blind. This pleased the narrator because he was pleasing to look at, but could not see that the narrator was not beautiful compared to his mother Yuriko. Johnson had put Yurio in a school for blind children and he’d grown up there. I forget why he was taken out, but Johnson had moved back to America and Yurio was placed in the care of Takashi Kijima.
Yurio liked rap music, and he told the narrator that he seriously thought he had talent. He had only agreed to live with the narrator because she said that she could buy him a computer that he could make music with.
Yurio seemed to be able to read the narrator very well. He would touch her sometimes, comfort her with a hand on her shoulder, and the narrator was extremely moved by it. At one point she wondered if being touched like that was what sex felt like.
When Yurio found out that the narrator had no money, he suggested that she do streetwalking, and she slapped him. However, she continued to see Yurio as a shining, perfect child, showing that she too was not immune to pretty privilege.
Wikipedia tells me that in the original version, Yurio had turned to prostitution because of money problems, and the narrator became his pimp. Eventually their relationship turned sour, and then the narrator resorted to prostitution herself. I think I would have preferred the original version if only because that was what Kirino had intended. Yurio would have been the first male prostitute in the book, and it would challenge the narrator and the reader to further examine their thoughts on women and prostitution. Through the book, some women found power in being a prostitute. That was the only way they felt power. Then what about women who bought prostitutes? Are they the most powerless? And what about the narrator’s feelings for Yurio? Would she love him less if she saw him as a prostitute, as the kind of man who touched women which she abhorred? Perhaps this was the reason that their relationship would have turned sour. The English version already showed the narrator being blinded by Yurio’s looks and ignoring his flaws and poor personality. I guess the original version would have accentuated it.
I guess Yurio was an interesting character because he was so deceptively evil. He was presented as an angel, but that was because the narrator gave him a pass she didn’t even realize she’d given him.
Johnson
Johnson was an all-around creep. When Yuriko was ten years old, he was already eyeing her up, waiting for her to grow up. When Yuriko came to him as a teenager, he already pounced. He slept with her, and he enjoyed hearing about her sexual exploits. I think he had sex and heard of her stories the way that people watch porn. It was a fantasy to him, the idea of a teenage girl who was so beautiful and so promiscuous that she would sleep with any man as long as he offered the money.
Johnson continued to have a relationship with Yuriko into her adulthood. They had a child but as mentioned, Johnson placed Yurio at a facility for blind children. It seemed Johnson supported Yuriko financially. But at the end of the book, he had moved back to America and that was why he placed Yurio in the care of Takashi.
Johnson’s Wife
Johnson’s wife was the kind of woman who wanted to be a cool girl so bad. I remember the first time the narrator had met Johnson and his wife, she had described a family dinner, where the men were all speaking together, and the women were all together. If I recall correctly, Johnson’s wife was part of the boys’ club (but don’t quote me on that, I could have misremembered).
But in all other parts of the novel, we saw that Johnson’s wife was very eager to please. Despite her more active nature, like Sachiko, she also worked hard at playing an agreeable wife. She took care of Yuriko, made sure she got into the best school, because she saw that Johnson liked Yuriko and wanted him to like her for taking care of Yuriko. Only, she didn’t realize that his interest in Yuriko was sexual.
Johnson’s wife had been a flight attendant, one of the jobs for women that are sexualized. And it kind of adds to the Western men fetishizing Asian women trope we had going on here in the parents’ generation of Grotesque.
After Johnson’s wife caught Johnson and Yuriko having sex, she pushed for divorce. She came into the story because she’d had some of Yuriko’s journals but didn’t want them, and gave them to the narrator. Honestly, good for Johnson’s wife for getting a divorce, as opposed to continuing to suffer as Sachiko did.
Kazue Sato
Kazue was a classmate of the narrator’s. She was a girl who had an idealistic view of the world. She also had a bit of a superiority complex.
First, Kazue’s home life was also rough for women. Kazue described the fact that there was a natural hierarchy in their family. Her father came first, then her, then their mother, and then her younger sister. As her younger sister became smarter, then she would overtake their mother. I think this is a sexist view of women who become housewives, thereby giving up their careers. My mother is a housewife, and I am extremely aware of what she gave up to take care of a household. For some women, it is a choice, and it can be liberating. But for some societies, it is a norm that women give up all careers and become housewives as they get married. Kazue looked down on her mom for not continuing to improve herself.
The narrator hated Kazue because she did not understand the social hierarchy at Q high school. Kazue didn’t realize that this wasn’t an equal society. It was clear that the earlier that one joined the Q school system, the more elite they were. Kazue’s first ‘misstep’ was embroidering a logo on her own sock to make it look like a luxury Ralph Lauren sock when it was just a normal sock. Kazue then wanted to join the cheerleading squad because all the popular girls were in it. She was rejected and she felt her rejection was unfair; she didn’t realize that it was probably just because she wasn’t pretty enough. Kazue then joined the figure skating club, where she was clearly being taken advantage of. She barely got to skate, and the members were always asking to copy her notes. She was naïve that as long as she did what others said, she’d get to the top. She did not have the smarts that Mitsuru did, the social awareness of Mitsuru or the narrator.
The narrator got so annoyed with Kazue that she would push her to do things to risk her own standing. She told Kazue to raise the issue about the cheerleading club rejecting in assembly because she wanted to humiliate Kazue. That did not come to pass as her announcement was interrupted.
Kazue was in love with Takashi, and she was deeply jealous of Yuriko. Kazue tried to get the narrator’s help to ask for intel. The narrator just made stuff up, and then suggested to Kazue to write love letters to further humiliate herself. Thankfully, Kazue’s crush was never outed in public, but she was humiliated enough when her letters were returned from Takashi.
Kazue didn’t go to Tokyo University, but she did go to university. She later joined G corporation, where her father worked. However, like at Q high school, Kazue could not read the social atmosphere. To be fair, the corporation was very sexist. They openly rated the women. However, like in high school, Kazue did not ever think to protect herself. There was an older coworker who tried to befriend her out of respect to her father, but she simply ignored him. Kazue thought that her work would have spoken for itself. She even went above and beyond and wrote an article in the newspaper, but barely got recognized for it.
Why did Kazue moonlight as a prostitute? Kazue did have a dream of making lots of money before a certain age. Since her father had died, she was the breadwinner. Much of her money went to the family. And that made her resentful to her mother whenever her mother chastised her.
In contrast with Yuriko, Kazue was said to love men but hate sex. Sex was perhaps a way for her to get close to men. She craved male validation from a young age. She listened to her father, she crushed on Takashi, etc. Kazue also had an obsession with Yuriko, to the point that her prostitute name was Yuri. Kazue was so proud when she found out that Yuriko was old and ugly now.
Kazue sometimes had to hype herself up. She always boasted about being an employee of G corporation and a graduate of Q university. But those were her only personality traits. She always thought that as long as you worked hard and had accomplishments, that they would be recognized, but those never came to fruition. She also believed that she was beautiful because she was thin, but apparently she was too thin (I think she might have been bulimic) and to the contrary, men did not find her beautiful.
There was another woman who had joined G corporation the same time as Kazue. She was considered prettier. Kazue had caught her going on a date with another man. He seemed very normal to her and was confused why the coworker liked him. After four years with G corporation, the coworker left and got married, not having to subject herself to the toxic culture at G corporation. I just thought it was an interesting story, another version of how life could go for a woman in this society.
Kazue reached orgasm for the first time with Zhang. She felt what it was like to make love. Because Zhang had embraced her, kissed her. Kazue didn’t find him particularly attractive, but she’d felt good with him. He was the only man to have embraced her like a lover and she was addicted to that.
Kazue was a very lonely woman. She hoped that by following all of the rules, she would one day by liked and loved. That is something I can definitely sympathize with. When things didn’t go her way, when she found herself stuck, she turned to prostitution because then maybe she would get some more attention. It worked out at first, with the professor and the manager as her regulars. The fact that she was being paid to have sex meant that she was attractive enough. But as she declined, she realized that people weren’t paying to have sex with her either.
Like the narrator, I think Kazue came to a very sad end. She didn’t feel loved. She was all alone in the world. And she was killed by a stranger who took advantage of her need to be loved.
Yoshio Sato
Yoshio was Kazue’s father. He seemed like the kind of guy who was strict at home because he didn’t get the respect he wanted in the workplace. The power dynamics were probably all in his favour because his family was full of women and girls. I think Kazue fancied herself her father’s favourite because she was smart.
The narrator had visited Kazue’s house out of curiosity. It was there that Yoshio told the narrator not to be friends with Kazue anymore. They’d overheard her when she spoke on the phone and was arguing with Yuriko about her accusing their father of killing their mother. They didn’t want that kind of trouble. And, Yoshio billed the narrator for her making an international call.
Later, Yoshio had called the narrator to ask about whether Kazue was in a relationship. That was when Kazue was sending letters to Takashi and Takashi had sent them back. Kazue had even knit a scarf she was planning to give to Takashi. The narrator assured Yoshio that Kazue was not in such a relationship, and all of a sudden he was so much more pleasant to her.
Yoshio was a douche.
Satoko Sato
Satoko was Kazue’s mom. At first, I thought she was not very nice. She wasn’t nice to Kazue. And I did find her annoying when she was chastising Kazue as an adult.
But then I stepped back a bit and realized that she’d been boxed in by being a housewife. She as almost a slave to her husband and daughters. Though to be fair, as an adult, Kazue was also a slave to the family. But Satoko was another example of a woman who was a victim of gender norms. Her daughter looked down on her for not pushing herself to be smarter, when she was probably busy taking care of the household.
Mitsuru
Mitsuru was the smartest girl in the narrator and Kazue’s grade at Q high school. We first met her when Kazue was exposed for having fake Ralph Lauren socks. Mitsuru had given Kazue a pair of normal socks so that she wouldn’t be caught with the fake socks.
The narrator got to know Mitsuru, and Mitsuru revealed that she kept ahead because when the elites asked her for her notes, she would give them a copy that were not as good as her own notes. The narrator found out that Mitsuru also came from humble means. She lived in a ward that was not very well off, but rented a house in a more expensive area so that she would appear rich. Her mother was the mama at a bar. Mitsuru and the narrator had a falling out when Mitsuru’s mom wanted them all to have a dinner. The narrator hated the idea of her grandfather in a romantic relationship because like everyone else, he was falling for sexual desire.
In the time that Mitsuru and the narrator spent apart, Mitsuru had become a doctor. However, her mother had gotten her into a cult (more on that later). On behalf of the cult, Mitsuru killed several people. Her husband did too, and was still in jail. Their two children were currently in the care of her husband’s family.
Mitsuru went to the trial for Zhang because she wanted to talk to the narrator. At the time, Mitsuru was a little off. She was dressed in strange clothes. She also had an argument with the narrator at a café, though I don’t remember what they were arguing about. The next time they met, the narrator noted that Mitsuru seemed a little more normal. And we saw that as we approached the end of the book, Mitsuru was doing her teeth-tapping thing that she did when she was thinking, and she was back to being the whip smart girl that she was in high school.
I almost forgot to talk about Mitsuru’s crush on Professor Kijima. She had always had a crush on him. She was always answering his questions in class. While she was in jail, Kijima wrote letters to her, where he admitted his faults. He claimed that he let Yuriko into Q high school because he wanted to see what would happen. He treated her like a specimen. Kijima felt that it was his fault that Mitsuru had become a criminal as well. After Mitsuru was released from jail, she went to visit Professor Kijima, and they rekindled their relationship and eventually were going to get married. The narrator characterized their marriage as Kijima’s last step in helping his student.
Mitsuru had Kazue’s journals, because Takashi didn’t want them, and she urged the narrator to read them. It seemed that the narrator was moved as Mitsuru has thought.
Mitsuru was a smart woman. Not without her flaws. Clearly, she fell victim to a cult. But I think her love for Professor Kijima kind of showed that she liked trusting authority figures, even despite her intelligence.
Mitsuru’s Mom
Mitsuru’s mom owned a bar. The narrator’s grandpa became a patron and slowly came to love her. The narrator hated it when Mitsuru’s mom tried to merge their families. Eventually, Mitsuru’s mom and the narrator’s grandfather lived together. If I remember correctly, the narrator’s grandfather fell ill and then she abandoned him. In dealing with her guilt, she joined the cult, and then convinced Mitsuru and her husband to join. Mitsuru blamed her mother joining the cult on the narrator’s grandfather.
Zhang Zhezhong
Zhang was convicted of the murders of both Yuriko and Kazue, though he only admitted to the killing of Yuriko.
His testimony was the first time the reader learned anything of him, and in hindsight we saw that his testimony attempted to make him look better than people around him said he was. Zhang claimed that he came from an impoverished family. He ran away to the bigger cities in China to work with his younger sister Mei-kun. However, the people they stole money from caught up to them, and they fled to Japan. On the way to Japan, Mei-kun fell off the boat. Zhang enjoyed life in Japan because people lived so much more luxuriously than he was used to in China.
The narrator found this testimony largely uninteresting. She only attended the court hearing because he’d boasted about his looks. She was disappointed that he was ugly and she decided that he’d done it (though I think if court documents are to believed then he was the murderer of both victims).
Some revealed that Zhang was not from an impoverished family, but that he was the son of a government official. We don’t know how rich or powerful his family was, but at least he wasn’t as impoverished as he claimed. In his testimony, Zhang claimed that he’d earned a lot of money being a gigolo for a woman who was the daughter of a high-ranking government official. However, others who knew him said that he’d earned money from drug trafficking. Zhang claimed that his sister had been forced into prostitution after going along with some unsavoury men, that he loved her but never acted on it, that she had fallen into the ocean and he was helpless to save her. But others revealed that he had forced his sister into prostitution, that when they were on the container to Japan, they’d had sex every night and that she had wanted to die because she couldn’t live like that anymore. Kazue had theorized that he’d pushed his sister into prostitution because he’d wanted to sleep with a sister who was a prostitute. So while Zhang had a very romantic spin on his own life, it appears he was far more cruel and heartless.
In Japan, Zhang was an illegal immigrant so he could only work the tough jobs. He was obsessed with luxury, he really wanted to be rich and to buy nice things. Over time, he got into money trouble with the roommates. He’d borrow money and not be able to return it etc.
So Zhang claimed that he’d killed Yuriko because she’d asked for it, that she was ready to die, and he just helped her with it. In court documents, it was revealed that Zhang had wanted Yuriko to roleplay as his sister, and she did it, but demanded more money from him afterwards and that was why he killed her. Zhang did not ask Kazue to roleplay as his sister. However, he did embrace her as he would like to his sister, and Kazue liked it very much, orgasming for the first time with him. When Kazue went to him again, Zhang joked that Kazue should pay him since she was the one who wanted something from him, and that kind of shocked Kazue a bit, realizing that she was the one who was desperate.
Why did Zhang only admit to killing Kazue? The court documents reveal that he did it. Unless the court documents are wrong, then why? Maybe Yuriko was interesting, because she had once been beautiful and now was ugly. Or maybe because Kazue was too frightful to Zhang and Zhang didn’t want to be associated with her. But Yuriko was not beautiful anymore. But perhaps because she wasn’t beautiful anymore, that she was now more human.
I admittedly fell for Zhang’s lies at first, but after hearing more about him, absolute scumbag.
Takashi Kijima
Takashi was Professor Kijima’s son. He and Yuriko met in middle school I believe. Basically, in the younger grades, boys and girls were not separated yet. So they were classmates. He offered to be Yuriko’s pimp, and she just went along with it. They made lots of money. After Takashi got kicked out, he and Yuriko lived together for a bit, but they later split and he didn’t hear from him again. If I remember correctly, Takashi confirmed that he was gay when he once saw Yuriko with a client and he was jealous of Yuriko.
From Professor Kijima’s letters to Mitsuru, he’d disowned Takashi and resigned from the school. Takashi also had a younger brother who had to withdraw from the Q school system without knowing the reason.
In the present, Takashi had become extremely overweight. The narrator hadn’t recognized him, but Mitsuru had. Takashi had continued to be in the pimping business. Johnson had put Yurio under Takashi’s care, presumably because he was the only person who had any kind of acquaintanceship with Yuriko.
Kazue had run into Takashi when she was thinking of going back to Juicy Strawberry, the agency that she’d worked at. Takashi said that she was old, ugly, and too skinny and that he wouldn’t hire her. And that angered Kazue.
Takakuni Kijima
Professor Kijima was the teacher who’d admitted Yuriko into the school. The narrator believed that he had done so because he liked her, and I think there was truth to that. Mitsuru was in love with Kijima, and was the teacher’s pet. When Yuriko and Takashi’s activities had been revealed, Kijima had to resign, and he pulled out his younger son as well. He then disowned Takashi.
Kijima wrote to Mitsuru when she was in prison. He said that he’d admitted Yuriko into the Q school system because he was curious from an academic standpoint. He wanted to see what would happen when you introduced such a specimen into the general populace. That was his excuse anyway. Do you believe it?
In the present, Kijima was a manager for a dormitory. He’d discovered a bug species and he continued to research and examine it in his own time. Mitsuru visited him after she was released from jail. I guess she confessed her feelings and he returned them, and then they were to be wed.
The narrator said that Kijima’s last act of rectifying his failure to teach his student was marrying Mitsuru, presumably so that she doesn’t get into trouble anymore. And that kind of expands on the sexist world in this book in which men were the ones with power, and good men were supposed to protect their women from the world.
Themes
Beauty
Our world is one that relies very much on looks. Pretty privilege gets people to high places. Yuriko benefitted from pretty privilege, being admitted to Q school, being liked by adults. But she was also very much objectified because of her looks. No man ever saw her as anything more than a sex object. Perhaps the only man who she ever had a friendship with was Takashi, who was gay. Perhaps it was because Yuriko was so objectified to the point that she had no personality, that the narrator said that she was beautiful bordering on monstrosity. She was inhuman from the moment she was born.
At the same time, people considered ugly were just doubly humiliated in the world. People were not shy to tell an older Kazue or Yuriko that they were ugly or disgusting. While Kazue did find some of her clients disgusting, she kept quiet for the sake of money. But once you give someone money, that kind of gives you the right to abuse them apparently.
The narrator tried her best to stay away from being judged, but she was still called out for being uglier than Yuriko. And no matter how she tried to shun the idea of beauty as a measure of value, she herself was so drawn to Yurio’s beauty. She was not immune to it.
Science
There were some characters who tried to use science to justify the ugliness in life.
From the beginning, the narrator had a fascination with faces. She always wondered what kind of child she would have with every man she saw. What a beautiful child would draw from each of them. What an ugly child would draw from each of them. It was because she had a complex about being the ugly sister to the beautiful Yuriko. She wondered whether she was the mutation, or whether Yuriko was the mutation. But her grandpa assured her that it was a family trait to not look like parents. Anyway, science was the narrator’s way of dealing with her insecurity about her looks.
In his letters to Mitsuru, Kijima discussed mutations as a result of individuation. Creatures mutate because they need to be different, they need to set themselves apart from society. So maybe people like Yuriko and Kazue who were extraordinarily pretty or extraordinarily not were always destined to be sidelined in society (as prostitutes).
In a funny way, the narrator who so badly wanted to be apart from society had to conform so much that she didn’t stand out.
Jealousy and Hatred
The narrator was insanely jealous of Yuriko’s beauty to the point that it affected her outlook on life. She was so hateful of Yuriko and she was so hateful of people who did like Yuriko because they automatically would point to the narrator as the ugly one.
I have written in my notes that Yuriko was jealous of the attention that their mother gave the narrator. I don’t remember when this happened lol. But in any case, the narrator always saw Yuriko’s attempts at getting their mother’s attention as Yuriko wanting to call attention to the fact that she was so much more beautiful than their family. In this way, the narrator always twisted things in life to look bad, and that was why she went about life so miserably.
Politics
Class politics at Q high school was just a smaller scope of politics in the real world. You had the elite students who had joined the Q school system from a young age. They represented old money, old politics, the people who had set the rules. The earlier you joined the Q school system, the more prestigious you were. But those who joined really scrambled to fit in.
For people like Mitsuru, they had to lead double lives in order to fit in. However, for people like Kazue, who were completely unaware of the dark side of politics, they would continue going through life thinking that it was equal when it very much was not. The narrator wanted to be outside of the insider/outcast groups, and she sort of succeeded, both at the Q high school and in the wider society.
Gender
A huge theme of this book. All of our female characters had very different relationships with men.
The narrator hated men, and for good reason. No man had ever paid attention to her or showed her positive feelings that were due to her own merit and excellence. From a young age, she was just the ugly Hirata sister. In the workplace, men would make lewd jokes and the narrator found them disgusting. She’d never felt anything for any man, until she met Yurio, who she felt was pure. And that was probably because Yurio was young, and wasn’t exposed to the world yet. She hadn’t seen how he acted with women. We started to see a bit of that at the end when Yurio told his aunt to prostitute herself. This is also why I think it would have been interesting to include the story line about Yurio becoming a prostitute, because I think it would force the narrator to confront the fact that Yurio wasn’t different, he was also a man.
Yuriko thrived on male validation. It was also the only validation she’d ever received, and the only kind she thought she could get. From childhood, men were waiting for her to grow up so that they could have her body. Only when she had sex, did she feel she had value, because no one ever complimented her for anything other than her looks. Not her brain, nor her personality. Even Takashi, who could sort of be considered her friend, only struck up a business relationship with her because he found her appearance marketable.
Kazue also craved male validation, because she never got it. She only ever got it from her dad, though of course she would never get romantic validation from her dad. She crushed on Takashi, who was considered pretty good looking, but he didn’t look at her at all. As an adult, she just didn’t know what men wanted. She was too thin, and her makeup was apparently too heavy. She had to resort to prostitution to receive male validation. She got it at first, from her two regulars. But those visits became few and far in between.
I also want to talk about the Japanese mothers in this story. They all played a relatively submissive role to their husbands. Yuriko and the narrator’s mother was so neglected that she committed suicide. Johnson’s wife was a huge people pleaser to the point that she was unknowingly abetting her husband’s sexual affair. Kazue’s mother sacrificed so much for the family that even the children did not respect her. Only Mitsuru’s mother was outspoken, and she was a widow.
Family
This was an extension of the point above about Japanese mothers. The traditional family dynamic put wives and mothers at a huge disadvantage. They were responsible for keeping the family together and yet they were barely respected. Kazue explained this with the family hierarchy of her father on top, followed by her, then her mother, and then her sister, who was fast catching up to her mother.
I forgot whether it was the narrator or Yuriko who said this, but one of them said that their mother was the conscience for both Jan and Karl. It was her who kept Jan from bringing his mistress into the home, it was her who kind of haunted Karl. Without her, the men were immoral and run amok. Jan did not care at all for his daughters after his mistress moved in and Yuriko went back to Japan. He barely even spoke Japanese in his old age and the narrator couldn’t speak with him. In the same way, Yuriko did not care for Yurio at all. Kazue became the breadwinner for her family and she resented that she was saddled with providing for her mother and her sister.
Domestic assault and domestic neglect were rampant in this book, often abuse against women.
Prostitution
Yuriko and Kazue both gained something a little different from prostitution.
Yuriko felt loved. She felt that she was valued by men. Why did she continue prostituting into her old age? Well, at that age, it’s kind of hard to get out. It was all she ever knew. It was the only way she knew how to make money. The only way she knew how to live.
Kazue felt valued as a prostitute. No one looked at her in her normal job. As a prostitute, people paid to have sex with her. It put a price on her body and her looks.
I forgot who said this, but there was the idea that the prostitute feels power over the john. Perhaps it was the one way that women felt they truly had power over men, when they were weak to pleasure. Maybe the prostitute feels power in the sense that they’re taking someone’s money.
I wished the English version could have kept the part about Yurio and the narrator’s prostitution as it would have explored these themes further.
Does Yurio feel power over female clients? Men have some privilege over women in real life, so would Yurio really feel anything? But a lot of men would find sex work shameful. In his testimony, Zhang felt embarrassed at being a gigolo (though that was argued to be a lie). So would Yurio feel the same?
There was a part in which the narrator thought about what it would have been like to be a streetwalker at 40 years old, as someone who’d never had sex. I think this was literal in the original version, but imagination in the English version. Would she feel valued because people were still paying to sleep with her at her age?
This is a very uncomfortable topic to discuss and yet I felt that Kirino had a lot to say about it.
Overall
I found this book surprisingly insightful. I had expected it to be a whodunit, but instead, it was an interesting psychological story. The original ending probably would have been more interesting. I felt that the English ending was kind of rushed. But overall I think this was a good book, just not a book that everybody would be comfortable with. As the name suggests, it is Grotesque.
Spoilers.
Story
The story was presented to us as testimonies from different characters who were all related to the crime. I will try to go over the story in chronological order.
The narrator (whose name is never revealed to us) grew up hating her younger sister Yuriko, who was always fawned over for her stunning looks. They were half-Japanese, half-Swiss. When their father’s business failed, the family moved to Switzerland, but the narrator stayed in Japan with her grandfather, desperate to be away from her sister. She studied hard to attend the prestigious Q high school.
In Switzerland, Yuriko began to explore her sexuality at age 15, first with her uncle. After Yuriko and the narrator’s mother committed suicide and their father’s pregnant mistress moved in, Yuriko decided to move back to Japan, where she’d live with Johnson and his Japanese wife. Though Yuriko was not as smart, she was still admitted to Q high school, likely for her looks.
In high school, the narrator had two acquaintances. One was Mitsuru, the smartest girl in her grade who also came from a humble background. The other acquaintance was Kazue, a rigid and idealistic girl. As for Yuriko, she befriended Takashi Kijima, the son of a Professor, who became her pimp. Yuriko and Takashi became very rich from her prostitution activities. Yuriko was also sleeping with Johnson, her guardian. Johnson’s wife found out about them and kicked out Yuriko and divorced Johnson. As well, Kijima’s father found out about Yuriko and Takashi’s prostitution activities and they were expelled. Both left their homes.
In the present day, our characters were linked together due to two murders. Yuriko and Kazue were both murdered by Zhang.
After high school Yuriko became a high class hostess/escort (it isn’t very clear). However, as her looks faded, she had to resort to prostitution. She had a child with Johnson, but she never cared for him. Yuriko was eventually killed by Zhang, though the details of her death are contested. Zhang insisted that Yuriko’s soul called to die, though the court documents state that they had fought over money.
Kazue’s father passed when she was in university, and so she became the breadwinner for her mother and younger sister. She attended university and in the present day had become the assistant manager to the research department of G corporation. By night, however, she turned to prostitution. She used to work at a call girl company but was fired, and also resorted to streetwalking. Zhang claims that he didn’t kill Kazue, but the court documents indicated that he did.
Mitsuru had attended Tokyo University and become a doctor. Her husband was also a doctor. However, she had joined a cult and murdered several people. In the present day, she had only just been released from prison, and had contacted the narrator. It seemed that by the end of the book, she had reverted to the clever self that she was in high school.
Zhang was the murderer who hailed from China. In the book, he had given a testimony about his background in China and how he had come to Japan. He claimed that he came from an impoverished background, and gave a more sympathetic view of his life. However, court documents and testimonies from people who spoke to him indicated that he was someone not to be sympathized with. He had come from a good background and threw that away, forced his sister into prostitution, etc. He claimed that he had only killed Yuriko and not Kazue.
The narrator lived a simple life. She’d gone to university and in the present day worked at a company. She lived in her grandfather’s apartment, while he was in an elder home. She had attended the court hearings for Zhang out of curiosity but did not sympathize him. At the court hearings, she bumped into Mitsuru, and also Kijima. Kijima had Yurio with him, the son of Yuriko and Johnson. Though the narrator had shown disdain for nearly everyone, she took an instant liking to Yurio. When Yurio told her to consider prostitution so that she could buy a computer for him, and she slapped him, but continued to show love for him.
What was this novel trying to say? I think it was a heavy look into class and women in society through different points of view. The themes were definitely very heavy.
Writing & Translation
The English version I’d read was translated by Rebecca L. Copeland. It was alright. There were times when it was a little corny. The reference to the Incredible Hulk at the very end of the book took me by surprise because it was kind of random. But overall I think it gave us a dreary atmosphere that I think Kirino would have wanted the reader to experience.
The writing portrayed as testimony was pretty interesting, especially because several of the characters were unreliable narrators. In the first perspective switch, when we got to read Yuriko’s diary, the narrator had said that she had taken the liberty of correcting some things. So whether or not we were getting Yuriko’s full story is up for debate. It’s the version that the narrator saw fit. For Zhang, his testimony showed a very tough life, but afterwards, we saw many people directly contradicting things in his story, showing that he was not as good of a person as he wanted to appear. I initially thought that perhaps Kazue’s diary was most true, but I also recall that she had written them for Takashi, so perhaps she wanted to portray a good side of herself, even if it seemed far from that to us. Perhaps the point was that all of these accounts were what these characters wanted the public to see, whether for themselves for others.
Characters
Narrator
For most of the book, our narrator was full of hatred, particularly hatred towards Yuriko, but that set the tone for her outlook on life.
The narrator refused to admit it, but she had a big inferiority complex compared to Yuriko. Her mother acknowledged it, but given her mother’s limited power in the family, she didn’t do much about it. The narrator always called Yuriko a monster because her beauty could not be humanly possible. The narrator also viewed all of Yuriko’s actions as deceitful or negative in one way or another.
Thus, the narrator was overjoyed at the idea of staying in Japan alone without her family. She often said that those days when her family was in Switzerland and she lived with her grandpa were her happiest days. I don’t think she particularly cared for her grandpa. I think she was neutral about him, and just learned to manipulate him so that she could have the life she wanted without being bothered. As for her parents, I don’t think the narrator had strong feelings for them other than perhaps pity for her mother. Sometimes she said her mother was proud of giving birth to Yuriko, but I think the narrator did notice that she felt weak in her own family.
The narrator was somewhat of a bully towards Kazue. She felt that Kazue was silly for not being able to read the atmosphere, for believing she could ever work to be one of the popular elites at Q high school. The narrator entertained herself by tormenting Kazue, and encouraging her to do things that would embarrass herself. In those moments, I realized that the narrator was so nasty and full of hate for the world. At the same time, the narrator seemed to hold some respect for Mitsuru because Mitsuru was able to keep everything control. She had good grades, wasn’t targeted by the elites, and could hide her humble background. I don’t think the narrator considered Mitsuru a friend, but she respected her. That being said, the narrator began to hate Mitsuru when Mitsuru’s mother got into a relationship with her grandfather. The narrator felt that her life was being turned upside down. Her grandfather was using up all of the money to look good, and now Mitsuru’s mother wanted them to be one big happy family, which the narrator rejected.
The narrator’s adulthood was fairly uneventful. She barely ever had any contact with Yuriko. However, in Yuriko’s diary, she mentioned that in her adulthood, her sister would sometimes call her because she new Yuriko was in a bad spot and it made her happy to know that. Otherwise, she worked at a job where she was on occasion harassed by coworkers (seen as unfortunately normal in this book), and her grandfather lived in an elder care facility. She was not wealthy, and that was why she continued to live in her grandfather’s home.
The narrator said that she had attended the court hearings because she was curious about Zhang. He had compared himself to a movie star, and the narrator was very disappointed to see it was not the case. I forget the details but I think when she was questioned by a reporter, she thought that he had definitely done it. I wonder if despite her inferiority about her looks, that she also gave in to biases based on looks.
The narrator was not interested in reconnected with Mitsuru and Takashi but just went along for the ride. But she was instantly taken by Yurio’s beauty, and especially so after finding out that he was blind and would thus not be able to judge her looks. She lied about having enough money to buy Yurio a computer because she wanted to be close to him so badly.
The narrator found herself surprisingly moved by Kazue’s journal. Soon after, she received news that her grandfather had died, and so she wouldn’t even be able to keep the apartment. She revealed to Yurio that she barely had money, just her emergency savings. Yurio suggested he go out on the street and earn money like his mother, and she slapped him. Obviously, it’s an offensive thing to say, and yet, the narrator said that she saw a brightness in Yurio.
As much as the narrator denied it, she held a bit inferiority complex to Yuriko. Her coping mechanism was to consider Yuriko the mutation in their family, for it was impossible that one sister could be so beautiful and the other could be so plain. Though her grandfather’s words perhaps also comforted her a bit, saying that it was in their family genes to not look like each other, for the narrator’s mother did not look like her father (the narrator’s grandfather), and the narrator didn’t look like her mother. Because the narrator was afraid of being compared to Yuriko, she withdrew from society as much as she could. At Q high school, she wasn’t even the victim of bullying, she seemed to somehow remove herself from the equation entirely.
The narrator claimed she was happy with her normal life, her life away from men because all men disappointed her and disgusted her. We saw people at her workplace say disgusting things, and she stood up for herself a little. And yet, things changed when she met Yurio. Yurio was the only male person she’d ever been positive about, and possibly to an unreasonable extent considering how Yurio had offended her and yet she was still so smitten. Despite the narrator removing herself from societal norms as much as she could, she still fell victim to the power of looks.
Yuriko Hirata
Yuriko was the narrator’s sister. From the narrator’s point of view, Yuriko was some kind of otherworldly creature but in a bad way, beauty to the point of monstrosity. The narrator characterized her as dumb, incapable, every single bad thing.
From Yuriko’s diaries, we definitely saw a more sympathetic character, even if the narrator claims she corrected some parts of it. The inferiority complex seemed one-sided as Yuriko had never hated her sister as her sister hated Yuriko. Of course, that is the privilege, since Yuriko would have been treated well enough to not realize that.
But because of her beauty even from a young age, Yuriko had a different outlook on life. When she was ten years old, she met Johnson, who was already an adult. And at that time, she’d already felt that Johnson was interested in her. In her mind, Johnson was telling her to “hurry and grow up” and Yuriko told him to wait for her. Yuriko’s first sexual encounter was with her uncle Karl. They had a sexual relationship during the time she was in Switzerland, which was a secret from everyone, though Yuriko had deduced that her father’s mistress could sense the vibes.
Yuriko said that her mother was the person she loved the most. While the narrator showed no feelings towards her mother’s death, Yuriko claimed to be more heartbroken. I’m not sure what to make of that, but I am inclined to believe that Yuriko did love her mother. The narrator once said that Yuriko would always answer to their mother because she wanted the world to know that someone ugly like their mother give birth to someone so beautiful like Yuriko, that Yuriko wanted the world to know she was so much more beautiful than her family. But I can see that being the narrator overthinking, and that Yuriko just wanted love. Yuriko said that their mother was the conscience of the entire family, including their father and Karl. Once their mother died, the family fell apart and dispersed.
Yuriko was enrolled into Q high school as an ‘exception.’ Basically I think students who had studied abroad were given an academic exception. She clearly was not smart enough, but most characters deduced that Professor Kijima thought she was pretty and let her in. More on that later.
Yuriko told Takashi that she was just at Q high school for sex, and so he pimped her out. They became very rich that way, right under the nose of Kijima senior.
Yuriko stayed with Johnson while in Japan. As we know, he was interested in her from a young age, and they did start a sexual affair, Johnson’s wife unaware. Johnson’s wife was so eager to be the good Japanese wife. She treated Yuriko very well because she knew Johnson liked Yuriko and she wanted Johnson to like her. I think Johnson saw their relationship as something of a thrill. He liked sleeping with Yuriko, and he also loved hearing about her sexual adventures. He didn’t show jealousy, he was just really excited about it. So Johnson definitely objectified her, only seeing her as a sex object. Johnson’s wife found out about the affair and was very upset. I think she made it out of the divorce decently.
Yuriko was kicked out of school after her prostitution was discovered by Kijima. She and Takashi lived together for a bit; Takashi was gay so they were not in a relationship. But eventually she moved away and had her own career. The only man she’d slept with regularly for her entire life was Johnson. It was Johnson who took responsibility of their child since Yuriko wanted nothing to do with him.
Kazue especially emphasized the fact that Yuriko became very ugly as an old woman because of her Western genes. Yuriko just accepted this. Yuriko in general seemed a very go with the flow person. More on that later.
The accounts of Yuriko’s death differed between Zhang’s testimony and the court documents. I’m getting my facts mixed up, but I think Yuriko wanted to charge Zhang more money because of his incest kink and she died because they fought over money. Though later on, Zhang told Kazue that he’d killed Yuriko because Yuriko had wanted to die and was ready for it, so he just helped her along.
Like I said, Yuriko seemed a go with the flow kind of woman. I think she never really had much ambition. I think some said that Yuriko lived because of men, but she also decayed because of men. I think at one point, a character also said that she liked sex but hated men. In any case, Yuriko was sexualized from a very young age, and I think it warped her perception of herself. All the older men were only interested in her for her looks, and she was eager to respond to that, because that was the only way that she felt validated. Only when she was having sex did she feel like she had worth, because her beauty was the only thing people ever saw her for. She wasn’t smart, nobody ever complimented her for her personality.
I don’t think Yuriko and Johnson had strong feelings for them, just that he was someone she could continue to get sex from. But she didn’t care about anything else. He provided for her, I guess, but she also wanted nothing to do with Yurio. I think she figured that if she had a child, she couldn’t continue her lifestyle.
Yuriko spent her life in the prostitution business, and she knew that as she grew old and had to sink to streetwalking, that she would eventually be killed by a john. Still, she kind of let it happen. I think she knew it was coming for her.
I think Yuriko was probably more insightful than people would have thought. I felt that at times she was more insightful than Kazue, because Kazue was idealistic, whereas Yuriko was just putting the world into context the way she saw it. She just didn’t realize that there was anything for her in the world other than sex.
Jan Maher
Jan was the narrator and Yuriko’s father. The narrator was neutral about him, but he definitely was not a good person. In many of the Western Male – Japanese Female relationships in this book, the men were selfish, and the women were very submissive. Jan and Sachiko were one such case. Jan did things his own way, and Sachiko just followed. Jan probably also held some racist beliefs about Japan vs. Western culture.
After he went to Switzerland, Jan began to have an affair with a worker at his factory, a Turkish girl. I don’t remember if Sachiko knew. But in any case, Jan had no feelings for his wife. Yuriko had even wanted to accuse her father of killing their mother. Everyone knew it wasn’t true, but to Yuriko, it would have felt good to blame their father who had never shown much love to Sachiko. Before long, Jan had even moved his mistress into their house because she was pregnant.
Jan didn’t know about the sexual relationship between his brother Karl and Yuriko. Though Karl acted all apologetic, he still did it. That being said, I think Yuriko realized that that relationship wasn’t going to last because of those conflicting feelings.
In the present day, the narrator tried to call her father to ask for money, but he could barely speak Japanese. So after Yuriko left for Japan, Jan basically had no contact with his two elder daughters.
Sachiko Hirata
Sachiko was the narrator and Yuriko’s mother. The narrator painted Sachiko as somewhat being both proud and afraid of their daughter. I don’t know that that’s true, I think the narrator was just including Sachiko to help her own narrative, which is what kids do.
Sachiko was definitely poorly treated by her husband. She hated making Western food for him. When they went to Switzerland, Sachiko exacted her own ‘revenge’ by making Japanese food. It was the only way she could express herself, because otherwise she was confined to the role of a perfect housewife, as many Japanese women are.
As an outsider, I think it was obvious that Sachiko was extremely lonely and neglected. She took sleeping pills to commit suicide, and the daughters considered that the cause of dispersal of their family.
Grandpa
The narrator stayed with her grandpa when her family was in Switzerland. He had been caught committing some scams relating to bonsai trees, and he was very much obsessed with them. The narrator was mostly neutral about him, which actually appeared positive. He was someone who was consistent, I guess.
The narrator started to be very bothered when her grandpa met Mitsuru’s mother and started to try to dress up to impress her. He started to sell all of his bonsai trees. The narrator was very upset that he, like everyone around them, was so changed by sexual desire.
Mitsuru’s mother and the narrator’s grandpa had lived together for a while. I don’t remember the details, but I think the grandpa fell ill, and then Mitsuru’s mother abandoned him. In the present day, he was in a senior home, senile and not really right of mind. His death at the end of the book threw the narrator and Yurio’s life into trouble as they would have to vacate the premises.
Yurio
Yurio was Johnson and Yuriko’s son. He was astoundingly beautiful, but was blind. This pleased the narrator because he was pleasing to look at, but could not see that the narrator was not beautiful compared to his mother Yuriko. Johnson had put Yurio in a school for blind children and he’d grown up there. I forget why he was taken out, but Johnson had moved back to America and Yurio was placed in the care of Takashi Kijima.
Yurio liked rap music, and he told the narrator that he seriously thought he had talent. He had only agreed to live with the narrator because she said that she could buy him a computer that he could make music with.
Yurio seemed to be able to read the narrator very well. He would touch her sometimes, comfort her with a hand on her shoulder, and the narrator was extremely moved by it. At one point she wondered if being touched like that was what sex felt like.
When Yurio found out that the narrator had no money, he suggested that she do streetwalking, and she slapped him. However, she continued to see Yurio as a shining, perfect child, showing that she too was not immune to pretty privilege.
Wikipedia tells me that in the original version, Yurio had turned to prostitution because of money problems, and the narrator became his pimp. Eventually their relationship turned sour, and then the narrator resorted to prostitution herself. I think I would have preferred the original version if only because that was what Kirino had intended. Yurio would have been the first male prostitute in the book, and it would challenge the narrator and the reader to further examine their thoughts on women and prostitution. Through the book, some women found power in being a prostitute. That was the only way they felt power. Then what about women who bought prostitutes? Are they the most powerless? And what about the narrator’s feelings for Yurio? Would she love him less if she saw him as a prostitute, as the kind of man who touched women which she abhorred? Perhaps this was the reason that their relationship would have turned sour. The English version already showed the narrator being blinded by Yurio’s looks and ignoring his flaws and poor personality. I guess the original version would have accentuated it.
I guess Yurio was an interesting character because he was so deceptively evil. He was presented as an angel, but that was because the narrator gave him a pass she didn’t even realize she’d given him.
Johnson
Johnson was an all-around creep. When Yuriko was ten years old, he was already eyeing her up, waiting for her to grow up. When Yuriko came to him as a teenager, he already pounced. He slept with her, and he enjoyed hearing about her sexual exploits. I think he had sex and heard of her stories the way that people watch porn. It was a fantasy to him, the idea of a teenage girl who was so beautiful and so promiscuous that she would sleep with any man as long as he offered the money.
Johnson continued to have a relationship with Yuriko into her adulthood. They had a child but as mentioned, Johnson placed Yurio at a facility for blind children. It seemed Johnson supported Yuriko financially. But at the end of the book, he had moved back to America and that was why he placed Yurio in the care of Takashi.
Johnson’s Wife
Johnson’s wife was the kind of woman who wanted to be a cool girl so bad. I remember the first time the narrator had met Johnson and his wife, she had described a family dinner, where the men were all speaking together, and the women were all together. If I recall correctly, Johnson’s wife was part of the boys’ club (but don’t quote me on that, I could have misremembered).
But in all other parts of the novel, we saw that Johnson’s wife was very eager to please. Despite her more active nature, like Sachiko, she also worked hard at playing an agreeable wife. She took care of Yuriko, made sure she got into the best school, because she saw that Johnson liked Yuriko and wanted him to like her for taking care of Yuriko. Only, she didn’t realize that his interest in Yuriko was sexual.
Johnson’s wife had been a flight attendant, one of the jobs for women that are sexualized. And it kind of adds to the Western men fetishizing Asian women trope we had going on here in the parents’ generation of Grotesque.
After Johnson’s wife caught Johnson and Yuriko having sex, she pushed for divorce. She came into the story because she’d had some of Yuriko’s journals but didn’t want them, and gave them to the narrator. Honestly, good for Johnson’s wife for getting a divorce, as opposed to continuing to suffer as Sachiko did.
Kazue Sato
Kazue was a classmate of the narrator’s. She was a girl who had an idealistic view of the world. She also had a bit of a superiority complex.
First, Kazue’s home life was also rough for women. Kazue described the fact that there was a natural hierarchy in their family. Her father came first, then her, then their mother, and then her younger sister. As her younger sister became smarter, then she would overtake their mother. I think this is a sexist view of women who become housewives, thereby giving up their careers. My mother is a housewife, and I am extremely aware of what she gave up to take care of a household. For some women, it is a choice, and it can be liberating. But for some societies, it is a norm that women give up all careers and become housewives as they get married. Kazue looked down on her mom for not continuing to improve herself.
The narrator hated Kazue because she did not understand the social hierarchy at Q high school. Kazue didn’t realize that this wasn’t an equal society. It was clear that the earlier that one joined the Q school system, the more elite they were. Kazue’s first ‘misstep’ was embroidering a logo on her own sock to make it look like a luxury Ralph Lauren sock when it was just a normal sock. Kazue then wanted to join the cheerleading squad because all the popular girls were in it. She was rejected and she felt her rejection was unfair; she didn’t realize that it was probably just because she wasn’t pretty enough. Kazue then joined the figure skating club, where she was clearly being taken advantage of. She barely got to skate, and the members were always asking to copy her notes. She was naïve that as long as she did what others said, she’d get to the top. She did not have the smarts that Mitsuru did, the social awareness of Mitsuru or the narrator.
The narrator got so annoyed with Kazue that she would push her to do things to risk her own standing. She told Kazue to raise the issue about the cheerleading club rejecting in assembly because she wanted to humiliate Kazue. That did not come to pass as her announcement was interrupted.
Kazue was in love with Takashi, and she was deeply jealous of Yuriko. Kazue tried to get the narrator’s help to ask for intel. The narrator just made stuff up, and then suggested to Kazue to write love letters to further humiliate herself. Thankfully, Kazue’s crush was never outed in public, but she was humiliated enough when her letters were returned from Takashi.
Kazue didn’t go to Tokyo University, but she did go to university. She later joined G corporation, where her father worked. However, like at Q high school, Kazue could not read the social atmosphere. To be fair, the corporation was very sexist. They openly rated the women. However, like in high school, Kazue did not ever think to protect herself. There was an older coworker who tried to befriend her out of respect to her father, but she simply ignored him. Kazue thought that her work would have spoken for itself. She even went above and beyond and wrote an article in the newspaper, but barely got recognized for it.
Why did Kazue moonlight as a prostitute? Kazue did have a dream of making lots of money before a certain age. Since her father had died, she was the breadwinner. Much of her money went to the family. And that made her resentful to her mother whenever her mother chastised her.
In contrast with Yuriko, Kazue was said to love men but hate sex. Sex was perhaps a way for her to get close to men. She craved male validation from a young age. She listened to her father, she crushed on Takashi, etc. Kazue also had an obsession with Yuriko, to the point that her prostitute name was Yuri. Kazue was so proud when she found out that Yuriko was old and ugly now.
Kazue sometimes had to hype herself up. She always boasted about being an employee of G corporation and a graduate of Q university. But those were her only personality traits. She always thought that as long as you worked hard and had accomplishments, that they would be recognized, but those never came to fruition. She also believed that she was beautiful because she was thin, but apparently she was too thin (I think she might have been bulimic) and to the contrary, men did not find her beautiful.
There was another woman who had joined G corporation the same time as Kazue. She was considered prettier. Kazue had caught her going on a date with another man. He seemed very normal to her and was confused why the coworker liked him. After four years with G corporation, the coworker left and got married, not having to subject herself to the toxic culture at G corporation. I just thought it was an interesting story, another version of how life could go for a woman in this society.
Kazue reached orgasm for the first time with Zhang. She felt what it was like to make love. Because Zhang had embraced her, kissed her. Kazue didn’t find him particularly attractive, but she’d felt good with him. He was the only man to have embraced her like a lover and she was addicted to that.
Kazue was a very lonely woman. She hoped that by following all of the rules, she would one day by liked and loved. That is something I can definitely sympathize with. When things didn’t go her way, when she found herself stuck, she turned to prostitution because then maybe she would get some more attention. It worked out at first, with the professor and the manager as her regulars. The fact that she was being paid to have sex meant that she was attractive enough. But as she declined, she realized that people weren’t paying to have sex with her either.
Like the narrator, I think Kazue came to a very sad end. She didn’t feel loved. She was all alone in the world. And she was killed by a stranger who took advantage of her need to be loved.
Yoshio Sato
Yoshio was Kazue’s father. He seemed like the kind of guy who was strict at home because he didn’t get the respect he wanted in the workplace. The power dynamics were probably all in his favour because his family was full of women and girls. I think Kazue fancied herself her father’s favourite because she was smart.
The narrator had visited Kazue’s house out of curiosity. It was there that Yoshio told the narrator not to be friends with Kazue anymore. They’d overheard her when she spoke on the phone and was arguing with Yuriko about her accusing their father of killing their mother. They didn’t want that kind of trouble. And, Yoshio billed the narrator for her making an international call.
Later, Yoshio had called the narrator to ask about whether Kazue was in a relationship. That was when Kazue was sending letters to Takashi and Takashi had sent them back. Kazue had even knit a scarf she was planning to give to Takashi. The narrator assured Yoshio that Kazue was not in such a relationship, and all of a sudden he was so much more pleasant to her.
Yoshio was a douche.
Satoko Sato
Satoko was Kazue’s mom. At first, I thought she was not very nice. She wasn’t nice to Kazue. And I did find her annoying when she was chastising Kazue as an adult.
But then I stepped back a bit and realized that she’d been boxed in by being a housewife. She as almost a slave to her husband and daughters. Though to be fair, as an adult, Kazue was also a slave to the family. But Satoko was another example of a woman who was a victim of gender norms. Her daughter looked down on her for not pushing herself to be smarter, when she was probably busy taking care of the household.
Mitsuru
Mitsuru was the smartest girl in the narrator and Kazue’s grade at Q high school. We first met her when Kazue was exposed for having fake Ralph Lauren socks. Mitsuru had given Kazue a pair of normal socks so that she wouldn’t be caught with the fake socks.
The narrator got to know Mitsuru, and Mitsuru revealed that she kept ahead because when the elites asked her for her notes, she would give them a copy that were not as good as her own notes. The narrator found out that Mitsuru also came from humble means. She lived in a ward that was not very well off, but rented a house in a more expensive area so that she would appear rich. Her mother was the mama at a bar. Mitsuru and the narrator had a falling out when Mitsuru’s mom wanted them all to have a dinner. The narrator hated the idea of her grandfather in a romantic relationship because like everyone else, he was falling for sexual desire.
In the time that Mitsuru and the narrator spent apart, Mitsuru had become a doctor. However, her mother had gotten her into a cult (more on that later). On behalf of the cult, Mitsuru killed several people. Her husband did too, and was still in jail. Their two children were currently in the care of her husband’s family.
Mitsuru went to the trial for Zhang because she wanted to talk to the narrator. At the time, Mitsuru was a little off. She was dressed in strange clothes. She also had an argument with the narrator at a café, though I don’t remember what they were arguing about. The next time they met, the narrator noted that Mitsuru seemed a little more normal. And we saw that as we approached the end of the book, Mitsuru was doing her teeth-tapping thing that she did when she was thinking, and she was back to being the whip smart girl that she was in high school.
I almost forgot to talk about Mitsuru’s crush on Professor Kijima. She had always had a crush on him. She was always answering his questions in class. While she was in jail, Kijima wrote letters to her, where he admitted his faults. He claimed that he let Yuriko into Q high school because he wanted to see what would happen. He treated her like a specimen. Kijima felt that it was his fault that Mitsuru had become a criminal as well. After Mitsuru was released from jail, she went to visit Professor Kijima, and they rekindled their relationship and eventually were going to get married. The narrator characterized their marriage as Kijima’s last step in helping his student.
Mitsuru had Kazue’s journals, because Takashi didn’t want them, and she urged the narrator to read them. It seemed that the narrator was moved as Mitsuru has thought.
Mitsuru was a smart woman. Not without her flaws. Clearly, she fell victim to a cult. But I think her love for Professor Kijima kind of showed that she liked trusting authority figures, even despite her intelligence.
Mitsuru’s Mom
Mitsuru’s mom owned a bar. The narrator’s grandpa became a patron and slowly came to love her. The narrator hated it when Mitsuru’s mom tried to merge their families. Eventually, Mitsuru’s mom and the narrator’s grandfather lived together. If I remember correctly, the narrator’s grandfather fell ill and then she abandoned him. In dealing with her guilt, she joined the cult, and then convinced Mitsuru and her husband to join. Mitsuru blamed her mother joining the cult on the narrator’s grandfather.
Zhang Zhezhong
Zhang was convicted of the murders of both Yuriko and Kazue, though he only admitted to the killing of Yuriko.
His testimony was the first time the reader learned anything of him, and in hindsight we saw that his testimony attempted to make him look better than people around him said he was. Zhang claimed that he came from an impoverished family. He ran away to the bigger cities in China to work with his younger sister Mei-kun. However, the people they stole money from caught up to them, and they fled to Japan. On the way to Japan, Mei-kun fell off the boat. Zhang enjoyed life in Japan because people lived so much more luxuriously than he was used to in China.
The narrator found this testimony largely uninteresting. She only attended the court hearing because he’d boasted about his looks. She was disappointed that he was ugly and she decided that he’d done it (though I think if court documents are to believed then he was the murderer of both victims).
Some revealed that Zhang was not from an impoverished family, but that he was the son of a government official. We don’t know how rich or powerful his family was, but at least he wasn’t as impoverished as he claimed. In his testimony, Zhang claimed that he’d earned a lot of money being a gigolo for a woman who was the daughter of a high-ranking government official. However, others who knew him said that he’d earned money from drug trafficking. Zhang claimed that his sister had been forced into prostitution after going along with some unsavoury men, that he loved her but never acted on it, that she had fallen into the ocean and he was helpless to save her. But others revealed that he had forced his sister into prostitution, that when they were on the container to Japan, they’d had sex every night and that she had wanted to die because she couldn’t live like that anymore. Kazue had theorized that he’d pushed his sister into prostitution because he’d wanted to sleep with a sister who was a prostitute. So while Zhang had a very romantic spin on his own life, it appears he was far more cruel and heartless.
In Japan, Zhang was an illegal immigrant so he could only work the tough jobs. He was obsessed with luxury, he really wanted to be rich and to buy nice things. Over time, he got into money trouble with the roommates. He’d borrow money and not be able to return it etc.
So Zhang claimed that he’d killed Yuriko because she’d asked for it, that she was ready to die, and he just helped her with it. In court documents, it was revealed that Zhang had wanted Yuriko to roleplay as his sister, and she did it, but demanded more money from him afterwards and that was why he killed her. Zhang did not ask Kazue to roleplay as his sister. However, he did embrace her as he would like to his sister, and Kazue liked it very much, orgasming for the first time with him. When Kazue went to him again, Zhang joked that Kazue should pay him since she was the one who wanted something from him, and that kind of shocked Kazue a bit, realizing that she was the one who was desperate.
Why did Zhang only admit to killing Kazue? The court documents reveal that he did it. Unless the court documents are wrong, then why? Maybe Yuriko was interesting, because she had once been beautiful and now was ugly. Or maybe because Kazue was too frightful to Zhang and Zhang didn’t want to be associated with her. But Yuriko was not beautiful anymore. But perhaps because she wasn’t beautiful anymore, that she was now more human.
I admittedly fell for Zhang’s lies at first, but after hearing more about him, absolute scumbag.
Takashi Kijima
Takashi was Professor Kijima’s son. He and Yuriko met in middle school I believe. Basically, in the younger grades, boys and girls were not separated yet. So they were classmates. He offered to be Yuriko’s pimp, and she just went along with it. They made lots of money. After Takashi got kicked out, he and Yuriko lived together for a bit, but they later split and he didn’t hear from him again. If I remember correctly, Takashi confirmed that he was gay when he once saw Yuriko with a client and he was jealous of Yuriko.
From Professor Kijima’s letters to Mitsuru, he’d disowned Takashi and resigned from the school. Takashi also had a younger brother who had to withdraw from the Q school system without knowing the reason.
In the present, Takashi had become extremely overweight. The narrator hadn’t recognized him, but Mitsuru had. Takashi had continued to be in the pimping business. Johnson had put Yurio under Takashi’s care, presumably because he was the only person who had any kind of acquaintanceship with Yuriko.
Kazue had run into Takashi when she was thinking of going back to Juicy Strawberry, the agency that she’d worked at. Takashi said that she was old, ugly, and too skinny and that he wouldn’t hire her. And that angered Kazue.
Takakuni Kijima
Professor Kijima was the teacher who’d admitted Yuriko into the school. The narrator believed that he had done so because he liked her, and I think there was truth to that. Mitsuru was in love with Kijima, and was the teacher’s pet. When Yuriko and Takashi’s activities had been revealed, Kijima had to resign, and he pulled out his younger son as well. He then disowned Takashi.
Kijima wrote to Mitsuru when she was in prison. He said that he’d admitted Yuriko into the Q school system because he was curious from an academic standpoint. He wanted to see what would happen when you introduced such a specimen into the general populace. That was his excuse anyway. Do you believe it?
In the present, Kijima was a manager for a dormitory. He’d discovered a bug species and he continued to research and examine it in his own time. Mitsuru visited him after she was released from jail. I guess she confessed her feelings and he returned them, and then they were to be wed.
The narrator said that Kijima’s last act of rectifying his failure to teach his student was marrying Mitsuru, presumably so that she doesn’t get into trouble anymore. And that kind of expands on the sexist world in this book in which men were the ones with power, and good men were supposed to protect their women from the world.
Themes
Beauty
Our world is one that relies very much on looks. Pretty privilege gets people to high places. Yuriko benefitted from pretty privilege, being admitted to Q school, being liked by adults. But she was also very much objectified because of her looks. No man ever saw her as anything more than a sex object. Perhaps the only man who she ever had a friendship with was Takashi, who was gay. Perhaps it was because Yuriko was so objectified to the point that she had no personality, that the narrator said that she was beautiful bordering on monstrosity. She was inhuman from the moment she was born.
At the same time, people considered ugly were just doubly humiliated in the world. People were not shy to tell an older Kazue or Yuriko that they were ugly or disgusting. While Kazue did find some of her clients disgusting, she kept quiet for the sake of money. But once you give someone money, that kind of gives you the right to abuse them apparently.
The narrator tried her best to stay away from being judged, but she was still called out for being uglier than Yuriko. And no matter how she tried to shun the idea of beauty as a measure of value, she herself was so drawn to Yurio’s beauty. She was not immune to it.
Science
There were some characters who tried to use science to justify the ugliness in life.
From the beginning, the narrator had a fascination with faces. She always wondered what kind of child she would have with every man she saw. What a beautiful child would draw from each of them. What an ugly child would draw from each of them. It was because she had a complex about being the ugly sister to the beautiful Yuriko. She wondered whether she was the mutation, or whether Yuriko was the mutation. But her grandpa assured her that it was a family trait to not look like parents. Anyway, science was the narrator’s way of dealing with her insecurity about her looks.
In his letters to Mitsuru, Kijima discussed mutations as a result of individuation. Creatures mutate because they need to be different, they need to set themselves apart from society. So maybe people like Yuriko and Kazue who were extraordinarily pretty or extraordinarily not were always destined to be sidelined in society (as prostitutes).
In a funny way, the narrator who so badly wanted to be apart from society had to conform so much that she didn’t stand out.
Jealousy and Hatred
The narrator was insanely jealous of Yuriko’s beauty to the point that it affected her outlook on life. She was so hateful of Yuriko and she was so hateful of people who did like Yuriko because they automatically would point to the narrator as the ugly one.
I have written in my notes that Yuriko was jealous of the attention that their mother gave the narrator. I don’t remember when this happened lol. But in any case, the narrator always saw Yuriko’s attempts at getting their mother’s attention as Yuriko wanting to call attention to the fact that she was so much more beautiful than their family. In this way, the narrator always twisted things in life to look bad, and that was why she went about life so miserably.
Politics
Class politics at Q high school was just a smaller scope of politics in the real world. You had the elite students who had joined the Q school system from a young age. They represented old money, old politics, the people who had set the rules. The earlier you joined the Q school system, the more prestigious you were. But those who joined really scrambled to fit in.
For people like Mitsuru, they had to lead double lives in order to fit in. However, for people like Kazue, who were completely unaware of the dark side of politics, they would continue going through life thinking that it was equal when it very much was not. The narrator wanted to be outside of the insider/outcast groups, and she sort of succeeded, both at the Q high school and in the wider society.
Gender
A huge theme of this book. All of our female characters had very different relationships with men.
The narrator hated men, and for good reason. No man had ever paid attention to her or showed her positive feelings that were due to her own merit and excellence. From a young age, she was just the ugly Hirata sister. In the workplace, men would make lewd jokes and the narrator found them disgusting. She’d never felt anything for any man, until she met Yurio, who she felt was pure. And that was probably because Yurio was young, and wasn’t exposed to the world yet. She hadn’t seen how he acted with women. We started to see a bit of that at the end when Yurio told his aunt to prostitute herself. This is also why I think it would have been interesting to include the story line about Yurio becoming a prostitute, because I think it would force the narrator to confront the fact that Yurio wasn’t different, he was also a man.
Yuriko thrived on male validation. It was also the only validation she’d ever received, and the only kind she thought she could get. From childhood, men were waiting for her to grow up so that they could have her body. Only when she had sex, did she feel she had value, because no one ever complimented her for anything other than her looks. Not her brain, nor her personality. Even Takashi, who could sort of be considered her friend, only struck up a business relationship with her because he found her appearance marketable.
Kazue also craved male validation, because she never got it. She only ever got it from her dad, though of course she would never get romantic validation from her dad. She crushed on Takashi, who was considered pretty good looking, but he didn’t look at her at all. As an adult, she just didn’t know what men wanted. She was too thin, and her makeup was apparently too heavy. She had to resort to prostitution to receive male validation. She got it at first, from her two regulars. But those visits became few and far in between.
I also want to talk about the Japanese mothers in this story. They all played a relatively submissive role to their husbands. Yuriko and the narrator’s mother was so neglected that she committed suicide. Johnson’s wife was a huge people pleaser to the point that she was unknowingly abetting her husband’s sexual affair. Kazue’s mother sacrificed so much for the family that even the children did not respect her. Only Mitsuru’s mother was outspoken, and she was a widow.
Family
This was an extension of the point above about Japanese mothers. The traditional family dynamic put wives and mothers at a huge disadvantage. They were responsible for keeping the family together and yet they were barely respected. Kazue explained this with the family hierarchy of her father on top, followed by her, then her mother, and then her sister, who was fast catching up to her mother.
I forgot whether it was the narrator or Yuriko who said this, but one of them said that their mother was the conscience for both Jan and Karl. It was her who kept Jan from bringing his mistress into the home, it was her who kind of haunted Karl. Without her, the men were immoral and run amok. Jan did not care at all for his daughters after his mistress moved in and Yuriko went back to Japan. He barely even spoke Japanese in his old age and the narrator couldn’t speak with him. In the same way, Yuriko did not care for Yurio at all. Kazue became the breadwinner for her family and she resented that she was saddled with providing for her mother and her sister.
Domestic assault and domestic neglect were rampant in this book, often abuse against women.
Prostitution
Yuriko and Kazue both gained something a little different from prostitution.
Yuriko felt loved. She felt that she was valued by men. Why did she continue prostituting into her old age? Well, at that age, it’s kind of hard to get out. It was all she ever knew. It was the only way she knew how to make money. The only way she knew how to live.
Kazue felt valued as a prostitute. No one looked at her in her normal job. As a prostitute, people paid to have sex with her. It put a price on her body and her looks.
I forgot who said this, but there was the idea that the prostitute feels power over the john. Perhaps it was the one way that women felt they truly had power over men, when they were weak to pleasure. Maybe the prostitute feels power in the sense that they’re taking someone’s money.
I wished the English version could have kept the part about Yurio and the narrator’s prostitution as it would have explored these themes further.
Does Yurio feel power over female clients? Men have some privilege over women in real life, so would Yurio really feel anything? But a lot of men would find sex work shameful. In his testimony, Zhang felt embarrassed at being a gigolo (though that was argued to be a lie). So would Yurio feel the same?
There was a part in which the narrator thought about what it would have been like to be a streetwalker at 40 years old, as someone who’d never had sex. I think this was literal in the original version, but imagination in the English version. Would she feel valued because people were still paying to sleep with her at her age?
This is a very uncomfortable topic to discuss and yet I felt that Kirino had a lot to say about it.
Overall
I found this book surprisingly insightful. I had expected it to be a whodunit, but instead, it was an interesting psychological story. The original ending probably would have been more interesting. I felt that the English ending was kind of rushed. But overall I think this was a good book, just not a book that everybody would be comfortable with. As the name suggests, it is Grotesque.