CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN

Author: Sayaka Murata
Year: 2020 (2016)
Publisher: Lind & Co
Language: Swedish (translator Vibeke Emond)

Reading some writers is like spending time in an ancient royal treasury in London or Vienna. laden with riches from floor to ceiling. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Thomas Mann, and Henryk Sienkiewicz come to mind as writers who will overwhelm their readers in a wealth of philosophical depth dressed in exquisite language and breath-taking style. Among contemporary writers Doris Lessing, Arundathi Roy, and Salman Rushdie could be mentioned.

Other writers are like that perfectly cut solitary diamond that stands in splendid isolation above all others sending its brilliance through countless facets in all directions and angles, demanding complete attention from the mesmerised onlooker. Nicolai Gogol, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Olga Tokarczuk are some writers that arguably would represent these sharp beacons in literature.

Yet from time to time, a writer settles for being the barely noticeable grain of sand inside the clam. The clam being you, the reader. The grain of sand that once being planted will over time grow into an ideal sphere of mother-of-pearl, expanding layer after layer as time passes, accumulating value by each thought being added, each perspective explored, each reflection pondered upon. In all its unassuming modesty. “Hur mår fröken Furukura” (“Convenience Store Woman”) by the Japanese writer Sayaka Murata appears to be precisely this sort of book and just maybe it is the rarest type of literature.

The plot is simple enough. Keiko Furukura is a thirty-six years old Japanese woman who has worked in a convenience store on an hourly basis for eighteen years. Colleagues have come and gone, bosses replaced each other numerous times, products been launched and cancelled, but Furukura has remained. This has caused some concern in her social life. No one is expected to work in a convenience store in Japan for this long. As a temporary solution to put oneself through college; sure. As an extra income for bored housewives for a year or two; no problem! But as a career? Unacceptable. Incomprehensible! Preposterous! On top of this, Furukura has never been in a romantic relationship which furthermore exacerbates her family’s and friends’ consternation.

From the offset, we learn through flashbacks from her childhood that Furukura has had a unique way to perceive the world around her and that her view has not always been aligned with the mainstream interpretation of social and natural phenomena in her community. Her occasionally radical actions as a young girl, based on literal rather than figurative compliance with instructions or incentives, repeatedly got her in trouble. As a consequence, Furukura began to observe people in her vicinity and mimic their responses to various situations. She even adjusted her choice of attire, her motion patterns, her speech and voice, and her opinions according to her observations. All was done in a dispassionate and objective manner without any show of emotion from Furukura’s side, apart from an occasional expression of disbelief or curiosity. Over the years, she manages to pass for somewhat normal. Had it not been for her career and her lack of interest in men.

It probably lies close at hand to diagnose Furukura somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum of high-functioning autism but for the purpose of the novel, this is largely irrelevant. Murata never mentions a diagnosis although Furukura’s family entertains the idea of their beloved Keiko being in need of therapy. Much more interesting are the things we can learn about our society through the eyes of someone who observes it from the outside and tries to adapt without really understanding. Contrary to an anthropologist, Furukura never attempts to explain or make sense of society. She is quite content merely finding a way to fit in and feel safe. Taking up the job in the convenience store was part of this quest to begin with, eighteen years prior to the events in the novel. Even so, we can learn a lot about ourselves by witnessing the world through the lens of her eyes. It is by this process, the nudge by the text that inspires the reader to apply his or her own power of observation to the story, that the grain becomes a pearl. Murata does not explain the world to us through Furukura. She does not interpret it or sift through it. She simply shows it to us through a different window.

A few words on the translation of the title. After some research, I seem to understand that the Japanese original title is in fact gender neutral and perhaps best translated as “Convenience Store Person” rather than “Woman”. Furukura’s gender certainly plays no meaningful role in the book. AT least not to her. The Swedish translation (which means “How is Miss Furukura doing?”) somehow misses the mark, too. Furukura is never referred to as Miss Furukura in the book; most of the time people just call her Furukura and only her family calls her by her first name. It seems to me that Murata went through some trouble to make her protagonist’s gender identity purposefully vague. And yet, both the English and Swedish translations blast it onto the respective cover.

SPOILER ALERT

All of Furukura’s carefully crafted persona is put to the test when the obnoxiously arrogant Shiraha is hired to the convenience store team. He is lazy, rude, unseemly, and daft. It soon transpires that his intended purpose of joining the team is to find a suitable wife. Not among his co-workers, mind you. That would be beneath Shiraha. He has his heart set on any random, affluent, and well-educated female customer of suiting age. Truth be told, he isn’t much interested in family life. All he claims to want is to get his own family, particularly his sister-in-law, off his back so that he can focus on starting his business.

When Shiraha and Furukura begin to talk, they come to realise that by moving in together, they can solve both their problems. The result of what seems to be a mutually beneficial arrangement and the effect it has on Furukura’s social life is the key takeaway from this book. Although, Furukura becomes miserable and thrown off, and makes no secret of it, her closest friends and family are overjoyed by the change in her life. Even when they see that Shiraha is an exceptionally poor choice of partner, they can still relate to Furukura through her misery which turns out to be her definitive entry ticket to full social acceptance. Better a miserable friend they can relate to than a content friend they cannot understand.

This, in the end, brings the story back to the assumption of Furukura’s diagnosis. Her atypical behaviour would generally be considered a result of her failure to connect emotionally to other people, as is part of the diagnosis for autism. And yet, looking at it from the other angle; isn’t her family’s and friends’ failure to connect with Furukura equally damning? And if so, on what grounds do we call out only one of the angles as a disability?

Sayaka Murata has written an adorable piece of fiction with a refreshing warmth and sense of humour. It is a simple and straightforward book about identity, acceptance, and harmony, all of which are important issues, but in no way do they overwhelm or crush the reader. I closed the book after the final page invigorated and energised with a final thought lingering in my mind: “Make Furukura the manager of the convenience store already!”