Perversions of Love in Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman

I read tons of romance. Many might consider it as brainless fodder; something to chow down on in your free time. But today I’d like to talk about something that’s a little more anti-romantic. It toes the line between romantic partners and platonic soulmates, intimacy and connection — some might even say, fate; a tacit knowing. It’s the kind of 1am bar conversations where you sit with someone with whom you  make a lifelong connection with, and who you’ll forever smile at if you see them in a passing subway. A little and a lot like the movie Lost in Translation. Recently, I was reminded of one such book from the Japanese Studies Society, whose recent book club on a novella threw up all notions of love for me. (It was their advertisement, because I didn’t get to go *sad face*.)

I’m talking about Convenience Store Woman (konbini ningen), a short novella by Sayaka Murata. Like Hiromi Kawakami’s novels, Sayaka Murata’s novel has the same colour block designs and stylistic overtones. And with the writing, you get something reminiscent of Sohn Won-Pyung’s Almond. In other words, it features a highly detached main character who goes through the repetitive and rote responsibilities of…(*gestures at something broadly on the horizon*) something. In this case, it’s reminiscent of its eponymous title, which is being a convenience store worker.

Keiko Furukura, a 36-year-old woman, has been working at the same konbini for 18 years. Unlike most people, Furukura sees herself as an outsider; someone who cannot adhere to conventional norms. So she chooses to stay in the convenience store, where she seeks comfort in the familiar, sanitised routines, and the rote motion of shelf arranging.

As Furukura notes:

A convenience store is a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated. The threatening atmosphere that had briefly permeated the store was swept away, and the customers again concentrated on buying their coffee and pastries as if nothing had happened.

Along the way, she meets a man — Shiraha — who seems to be an outcast like her. Not only does he, like Furukura, struggle to hold a stable job beyond a part-time wage, but he also embodies and proliferates deeply misogynistic views. While they harbour plainly platonic feelings for each other, they put on the guise of a couple and eventually move in together. Their relationship is predicated on practicality, and mainly so that Furukura can throw some smoke over the perspicacious and seeing eyes of her co-workers, who constantly pressure her to get married and move out. No suspicion here.

My question then is, what is love like for people like Furukura and Shiraha, who live in a society like Japan’s — which, despite its many upsides, also enforces conformity, neatness, and subservience?

What is love?

Famously known as the three types of love, Greek has long conceptualised the three forms of love as Eros (romantic), Philia (brotherly), and Agape (divine and/or unconditional love). When I read Murata’s work, I conceived that there almost certainly was some kind of connection — but I simply couldn’t put my finger on what it was. To call it an Eros love would be erroneous; but to call it Philia would also be a stretch. Could we then, strangely enough, term it as an Agape love?

I’m not saying that there’s a need to conform to these mere categories. Yet, in a perverse and twisted sense, Furukura and Shiraha certainly embody an Agape sort of love. Intertwined in a sick sort of fate where they are unable to conform to society’s notion of conjugal bliss and responsibility, their hands are unconditionally tied to each other. Granted, there are certainly no permissible feelings. One may even go so far as to say that they hate each other. However, that is what, if anything, Agape love might constitute. Unogranic rather than natural; chosen rather than involuntary. From there, this heralds a move towards loving the unlovable, or to continue loving even when we may think they don’t deserve it, or even in spite of any negative or undesirable feelings.

I found that refreshing. Often we perceive love as stemming from feeling. A tug of the heartstrings — Eros, or a feeling of companionship and trust kindled from a long-term friendship — Philia. Agape, on the converse, challenges all these preconceived notions. Like how intriguing Furukura and Shiraha’s relationship are, it is as much antithetical to our ‘normal’ ideas of love, and as much representative of the best kind of love above all. Indeed, despite the rife and abundant presence of an extant and lasting binary of necessity, hate, and pragmatism, love prevails. A perverse kind of love.

While this can be typically interpreted as a sad outcome, I’d argue that it triumphs normal tropes of love and pulls the mask off the ugly. Our own relationships — such as those we’ve been born into — might just be the same unconditional love that comes with no rewards. Obligatory fate; like a parent without a home and who you choose to shelter despite the past trauma you experienced with them. More so than anything, what I admire about this love is not the fact that it preys on the alien, but in the fact that people can have the capacity to love and offer care in spite of all the odds being stacked against them. It also imparts on me that love can be more than just a feeling or a moment. It can be enduring.

Murata likely never intended for this book to be read from a romantic or realist perspective. If anything, it was likely meant to be something beyond a creative piece; a literary perspective into the bad and ugly, and something to ponder on. Sometimes, though, you’re able to excavate something alienating and ugly — and in that way, beautiful, — through such a perverse kind of love. It is also interesting to note that other Japanese media, like Makoto Shinkai’s films, tend to grapple with a fine line between romance, intimacy, friendship, and fateful serendipity. In Murata’s case, she flips serendipity on its underbelly to reveal that love is as close as hatred can be. I imagine that if more media could cover this, sales would be busted for Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis. Maybe the yuckiest forms of love can and will prevail with the right audience: Me.

By: Yuki Koh