Sayaka Murata Interview: A Creature In My Own Right
Ойын-сауық
Meet one of Japan’s most striking young writers.
Writer Sayaka Murata worked several years in a convenience store and wrote a best-selling novel about her odd experiences, feeling brainwashed “as if there was a convenience store god I could not betray.”
Sayaka Murata started writing novels when she was ten years old. “At that time, I wanted to look at people with the eyes of an alien. I found that people were very strange creatures. And creatures like people who let the hair on their heads grow long shave their bodies and wear clothes made of textiles must look like very strange creatures. And there are a lot of them. If someone from outer space sees us and if they compare people to cats or dogs they will think that we are really strange creatures”.
Murata feels very much inspired by the Japanese writer named Rieko Matsuura. “Originally, I was really restricted by the idea of being a woman or a human being. I really disparaged and restricted myself. But she taught me that I could live in another way. She writes stories about a person who becomes a dog or about a woman whose big toe becomes a penis. I read all her stories very eagerly. Not just because they were strange; they really saved me. They set me free. They freed my soul. I was not just a human being or a woman. She took me to a place where I was a creature in my own right. And I am very grateful for that,” Murata says.
Sayaka Murata is born in 1979. She is considered one of the most striking prose writers of contemporary Japanese literature. Until recently she worked in a convenience store, where she drew inspiration for her big literary breakthrough, Convenience Store Woman, which has sold over a million copies in Japan. The novel is about the outsider Keiko, who works in a convenience store in Tokyo. The work is routine but allows her to disappear into the role of “a normal human being,” among other ways by imitating her colleagues’ ways of speaking and dressing. “Unsettling and totally unpredictable,” Sally Rooney has called the novel.
Murata has won several prizes, including the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, the Mishima Yukio Prize, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, and the Akutagawa Prize. Her books have been widely translated. Besides ‘Convenience Store Woman’, which came out in English in 2018, her novel ‘Earthlings’ appeared in English in 2020.
Sayaka Murata was interviewed by Tore Leifer at the Louisiana Literature festival in August 2019, at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. Interpreter from Japanese: Mette Holm.
Camera: Klaus Elmer
Edit: Kasper Bech Dyg
Produced by Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2020
Supported by Nordea-fonden
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Пікірлер: 22
She somehow explains the concept of the book really well, but I can’t help feeling through her giggles and faraway gaze that there is more to her explanation, she just can’t put it fully into words. It really reflects the strong meaning behind the book.
Maybe it has already been explained somewhere, but when reading Convenience Store Women (not finished yet) I wondered if the main character was on the autistic spectrum. A number of times they talk about not knowing how to be a "person", so they have to copy others to blend in. That sounded a lot like the masking people on the autistic spectrum often do. The sensitivity to sounds was also interesting. I love the book so far and will definitely look for others by her.
@marlification
2 жыл бұрын
I was thinking the same thing
@liviamaria8401
Жыл бұрын
I was thinking the same thing when I read Earthlings!
@kaiMikail
Жыл бұрын
she's probably on the spectrum as well as her writing (main character) is technically on the spectrum. refusing to join conformity. which is not a bad thing bc that is how they were born/experience
@aleksandrausolova4804
Жыл бұрын
There was roundtable with miss Murata and translators of the book from different countries, and she said that she's been asked this question a lot, and she created the main character as normal person who simply approaches everything from very rational point of view.
@khyrianstorms
2 ай бұрын
Yes, but as someone on the spectrum, having been around a lot of people who found out about being on the spectrum quite late: people write what they know. If hey ironically just don't know they're on the spectrum, they'll explain it quite differently.@@aleksandrausolova4804 One thing I would like to add: whether the subject (Keiko) or the writer are on the spectrum doesn't matter. It's so wonderfully written that both neurotypical and neurodivergent people can find something in it they relate to. And as such, it shows that there is a binding factor between being on the spectrum or not, and that this book has swiftly opened up the conversation of just not being "typical" or "normal".
She's so empathetic towards others in society. Although she is talking about Convenience Store Woman in this interview, I'm guessing based on the interview date that her mind was more involved with ideas from Earthlings, with her talking about feeling like an alien. Earthlings is a wild book that addresses so many taboos, but she speaks about it so rationally as a service to her fellow humans. Truly inspiring author. Thanks for the interview!
Her voice matches that of her writing... "it's heavenly!"
Her feeling of being "really restricted by the idea of being a woman or a human being" strikes a deep cord within me; I likewise, a fiction writer myself, never identified as a 'woman', 'straight' though I am. Womanhood for me is a cage lined with absurd narratives spun to serve men & children while my human-ness is a mere shell, a temporal flesh-and-bone vehicle designed to facilitate my soul's earthly journey, nothing more. Basically, what Sayaka has plugged into, consciously and with impunity, is her own Truth, her authentic Self, hence her concern that young women find the motivation & courage to follow their own dreams rather than make fear-based choices in a blind pursuit of security. As a former convenience store robot of an employee with a perfect attendance record, Sayaka knows well what Self-betrayal looks & feels like, & ironically, how alien-like & bizarre a "normal" (brainwashed) person truly is in a traditional Japanese society (in which SHE is the unmarried, child-free freak). Her pensive face & sincere way of speaking here convince me she's living deliberately & peacefully in the current of her true Self; she's free, a "creature in [her] own right." I feel her Light; she's a beacon of clarity, a breath of fresh air!
Loved her book 👍🏽
What an insight to her mind.
Powerful and contain many social issues that still lives in any society around the world. Convenience Store Women, one of best novel which I read this year. Thanks a lot Sayaka Murata.
Smart woman who is brilliant at observation.
Thank You 🙏 Beautiful sharing of how Novels & Stories help us re~Imagine our lives~Ourselves 🦋
She's amazing
Enoyed reading the book in Korean. Now reading her second book Earthlings.
her books' amazing..
Я думал автор кыргыз Саяк мурат, оказывается это женщина, о боже
@depotemkin
5 ай бұрын
Жизнь никогда не будет прежней...
....too much details...good to make a movie
@iain2080
2 жыл бұрын
What an awful way to view literature of any kind