Dichotomies Abound in "Earthlings" by Sayaka Murata
Earthlings is the second of Sayaka Murata’s novels to be translated from Japanese into English by Ginny Tapley Takemori. The first was Convenience Store Woman (2018) which explores some of the same themes, predominantly the societal pressure to conform to a normal productive life of work, marriage, and parenthood. The book cover of Earthlings features a cute, cuddly plush toy hedgehog and review quotes using the words “hilarious” and “charming” that contrast sharply with episodes of abuse (emotional, physical, and sexual), violent murder, and more horrors that I will not spoil for those who still wish to read the novel.
The premise and blurb are hilarious and charming. Eleven-year-old Natsuki doesn’t fit in with her family. She copes by talking with her cute toy hedgehog, who is really from the planet Popinpobopia, and gives her magic powers to survive on Earth. Natsuki’s cousin Yuu doesn’t fit in either and his mother swears he is an alien. Maybe he is also from Popinpobopia (a fabulous word that sounds like the next music craze). The two misunderstood outcasts form a strong bond and the tale of their childhood adventures is endearing and bitter-sweet. The tone and quirkiness are reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s film Moonrise Kingdom.
Murata uses simple language with enough ambiguity to make the reader wonder whether aliens might exist beyond a traumatized girl’s coping mechanism and Takemori’s translation conveys this quality well. However the title translation seems an odd choice. The original Japanese title is 地球星人 (Chikyūseijin), which translates to Earth Alien—a fitting dichotomy for the cousins who are alien to the norms of human society on Earth, whether they hail from another planet or not.
Murata’s detached narrative style and the naïveté of the main character juxtapose the disturbing atrocities that follow—you’ve been warned. When her teacher makes sexual advances, Natsuki thinks she must be imagining it because “It was unlikely anyone as good-looking as him would be interested in an elementary schoolgirl like me. I was probably just being uptight.” After Natsuki is molested (a scene that will make your flesh crawl), she tells her mother, who echoes these same words and beats her daughter for lying. We follow Natsuki into adulthood and each time she tries to confide her trauma to someone, she is either told she was lucky to have such a handsome man love her or ostracized and berated for lying. Horrifying, yet a truthful exploration of rape culture.
This is not the only social construct Murata exposes. The cousins fight against a society that exists for the production of human babies, which they dub the “Factory”. “My town was a collection of nests, a factory for manufacturing babies. I was a tool for the town’s good.” The Baby Factory produces children, who are eventually shipped out and “trained how to take food back to their own nests” and the cycle continues. Natsuki’s family and friends, slaves of this relentless Factory, pressure her to marry and become fulfilled as a mother. Instead she carves her own path and finds another nonconformist, Tomoya, and enters a secretly non-sexual marriage of convenience. But the Factory is not satisfied. Her friends remark how strange it is that Natsuki and her husband share the housework and haven’t reproduced yet. When the sham is exposed, Natsuki’s mother-in-law calls the couple abnormal and tells Tomoya to hurry up and make a baby and then he can play around—that’s “a man’s reward” and privilege.
The couple and cousin Yuu try to escape the Factory, living off the land in a return to an off kilter version of Moonrise Kingdom, one that becomes more isolated and animalistic. Then POW! Once again an abrupt style shift propels us to a twisted, gory, sci-fi sequence. Because of the absurdism and distancing from reality, this section is almost easier to digest, despite the horror.
The dichotomy in the writing leaves the reader wondering what genre is this book and what is going on. We are reeled in by a whimsical tale of how an oddball nonconformist, and maybe alien, copes in this world. We root for characters that want to be left in peace, outside of society’s norms. But the abrupt bait and switch, not once but twice, is infuriating. The book defies categorization as it crams multiple styles into an amalgam of Banana Yoshimoto’s The Lake, Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World and Joseph D’Lacey’s Meat. Earthlings with a fascination for the abomination might find this book bizarrely compelling, but those who prefer a less trauma-triggering, nausea-inducing read should pick up Murata’s Convenience Store Woman instead.
Earthlings
Sayaka Murata, translator Ginny Tapley Takemori
247 pages. 2020 (English translation)
About Diane Englert
Diane is a writer, accessibility consultant, and provider of audio description and open captioning services. Her writing appears in Ruminate Magazine, From the Depths, What Rough Beast, Hash Journal, We’ll Never Have Paris, and Nanoism, among others. She recently finished her first middle grade novel. Diane worked in theater as a director, producer, dramaturg, actor, and wrote libretto for several mini musicals that have all been produced. Diane loves coffee and her family, who say she makes The Best Banana Bread. Her bite is worse than her bark. Find her on Instagram @signeddiane.
