Vanishing World

Murata (Convenience Store Woman) delivers an intimate and disturbing speculative tale in which social isolation and population control are taken to extremes. Amane Sakaguchi lives in an alternate Japan where artificial insemination developed rapidly during WWII and became the de facto method of procreation. As a girl, Amane embraces this new way of life despite her mother’s resistance to it (she used the “primitive copulation” method to give birth to Amane). In adulthood, Amane struggles with sexual lust but tries to conform by attending a series of matchmaking parties. She strikes out until at age 31 she meets and marries Saku, with whom she decides to have a child via artificial insemination at 35. Her mother casts doubt on their happiness (“A marriage that goes too smoothly gives me the creeps”), however, and as Amane and Saku each date other people (sexless polyamory is another societal norm), they grapple with the limits placed on their respective desires. Saku eventually convinces her to move to Experiment City in Chiba, where children are raised communally and each citizen is called Mother. Amane senses that something is deeply wrong there, and her quest to rid herself of all her bodily urges propels the narrative to an explosive and haunting conclusion. Murata’s blunt and bizarre humor is on full display (“Amane, thanks for eating me,” a boyfriend tells her after she swallows his semen), as is her incisive commentary on contemporary Japan. This nightmarish fable is impossible to shake. (Apr.)