The first story title Naked is about a woman who gets divorced and become unemployed at the same time as she had built her company from scratch with her former husband. Once a high achiever—she seemingly begins to enjoy her unemployment regardless of what people around her might think of.
The second story, Planarian, tells the story of a cancer survivor whom I would avoid being friend at all cost because she’s honestly a pain in the ass. She can’t stop talking about how she have dealt with cancer and bring it up every time she has to, even though she no longer had it. It is incredibly irritating to have someone like her around. But what’s amazed me is how the author notice that this particular person always exist between society.
The third story, Here, Which Is Nowhere, features the most normal protagonist in the book—a devoted house wife. She was caught up in an unfortunate situation where his husband is ‘restructured’ by the company (familiar much?) and in result forced by the less-than-ideal circumstances to work part time and take midnight shifts—where her ‘job’ was to make sure her husband, children, and her mom had been taken care of by the end of the day—to make ends meet and that’s where the problems starting to arise.
The fourth story, The Dilemmas of Working Women section, which shares the same title of the book, tells a story about the woman who ponders a little too long whether to marry her long time boyfriend. I had a hunch that this reflects something many woman in modern society in Japan face—leading them to hesitate to when it comes to marriage. But this might be an eye opener for those dealing with the same issues—that your boyfriend is considered a glaring red flag when up until now he was a freeloader—living off parents’ money and planning to do so after marriage—def not a husband material.
The last part, A Tomorrow Full of Love, is my favorite. It is written from a first person point of view, which is a divorced man who describe what he feels toward this homeless girl he simply can’t stop taking care of.
In the end, it was rather amusing to realise that this book is written around 2000s and yet depicts some issues that is still relatable to these days—corporate restructuring program, societal pressure to get married or to join the workforce, or simply to live up society’s expectations. My first impression shifted slightly after reading the translator’s note at the last page, which emphasize that this overall story should be understood within the cultural context—specifically on how the Japanese society is constructed or how rigid the gender role there. Overall, the stories are somewhat showcase different realities that women could go through and in the end, they have to stay true to their own voices, no matter how unusual and heavy it might seems.
