11/4 Jimmy

 Sayaka Murata - “A First-Rate Material”

What got me about this one is that Murata makes the reader the weird one. Naoki’s disgust is basically our reaction, and the story treats it like a quirk he should get counseling for. The real subject is the word “barbaric.” Both of them use it to mean “whatever the other person thinks,” and by the end it doesn’t mean anything. 

Aoko Matsuda - “The Missing One”

This is a ghost story with no ghost. Okiku’s legend is about a powerless servant and a predatory master, and Matsuda turns that into Kikue’s habit of bracing for the worst from every man she emails. The best move is the ending. I also liked the monorail as the town’s “phantom limb.” 

Aoko Matsuda - “On High”

Same book, totally different energy. Tomihime is less spooky and more of a burnt-out employee at a tourist attraction. What I didn’t catch at first is that the two stories connect: Okiku left the well, and the “fine young man” west of the station is pretty clearly Yūta. (Rereading the shop scene after that was fun.) The ending is what stuck with me. She’s tied to the castle whether she likes it or not, and the place is her identity. 

Toh EnJoe - “13. Japanese”

It’s written like a research report, and the thing being studied is Japanese itself. Every other reading this week looks at Japan from the inside. This one imagines a future where Japan is gone and the language is a dead artifact nobody can crack. The joke is that more evidence only makes things worse. Every new batch of texts creates more theories instead of answers.  I also noticed it fits with the other readings in a weird way. Murata’s bodies become furniture, Matsuda’s monorail outlives its use, and here a language outlives the people who spoke it.

Mai Ishizawa - The Place of Shells

Like Matsuda, this has a dead person come back, but it plays it straight and sad instead of funny. Nomiya is solid and casts a shadow, and that somehow makes it worse. Everything here is about measuring distance: the scale-model planets, the nine years, the masks. The Covid masks and the ghost’s mask end up doing the same job.

Sayuri Ueda - The Cage of Zeus

This was the only true sci-fi reading, but what stuck with me was how human the opening is. Shirosaki wakes from months of hibernation with the smell of cut grass and a memory of picking mangoes as a kid, because the ship uses nostalgia to wake people up. Then he arrives at a station where Jupiter looms over everything and has already broken one of his coworkers. The “eye of Zeus” idea made space feel less like adventure and more like something that wears you down. It connects to the Ishizawa reading too, since both open with memory pulling someone out of a strange present.