In the summer of 1992, I studied International business in
Tokyo, Japan. Every school day, I would commute into the city on the train
along with mostly businessmen, office girls and high school students who were attending
cram school. After a while, the students on the train figured out that I was an
approachable friendly sort of guy, and a few of the braver ones tried chatting
with me to practice their English. I didn’t realize it at first, but as I talked
with one or two of the students, their classmates were listening very carefully
to what we were saying. Once I made a joke that the person with whom I was talking
didn’t catch, but one of the eavesdroppers did. When she laughed, we all turned
to look at her, and being embarrassed for having brought attention to herself
and her curious classmates, she melted into the crowd of students behind her.
During that long ago summer, it occurred to me that young
Japanese women suffer a harder row to hoe than most American high school women
or, in fact, other Japanese. They had to meet the social expectations that the
rest of their generation has to suffer, but they also had to suffer an arrogant
sort of Japanese male chauvinism. This ranged from TV cameramen who would run
their cameras up and down the legs and made sharp close ups on the cleavage of
pretty girls to the discreetly paper-cover manga that men and boys would read
on the trains. These comic books often had terrible scenes of pornographic sex
and sexual violence.
At the same time, these young women-like all young people everywhere
sought for ways to express their unique individualism. This was expressed many
ways from decorating personal items with “Hello Kitty” to dressing as Brazilian
samba dancers in a summer Bon Festival parade. When a person is young and under
enormous social pressure to conform and meet the expectations around him or
her, it is normal to band together with friends to enjoy and express an unique
and separate identity.
This is the premise of “Real World,” the 2008 translation by
Phillip Gabriel of “Riaru Warudo” the 2006 novel by Natsuo Kirino. This is the
story of four high school girls who live in metro Tokyo and have been best
friends forever. They don’t belong to any other clique or group and they all
are attending the same summer cram school as they prepare for college entrance
exams. Beyond that, each one feels that she is unique. Each has her own
terrible secret which she believes the others don’t know and wouldn’t
understand. The others know or least suspect, of course, but it’s not mentioned
because they’re friends.
One of the girl’s neighbor is an unremarkable boy who
attends a more prestigious high school, The girls have nicknamed Worm. One day,
he is accused of violently beating his mother to death, but before the crime is
discovered, he steals the girl’s bicycle and cell phone while apparently
leaving the crime scene. As a result, the four girls become involved in
different ways with the young murder suspect as he goes on the run. Each girl
in her own way has her life changed when they completely confront the reckless violence
of the real world.
I enjoyed reading “Real World,” and I look forward to
reading more by Natsuo Kirino who has been described as a feminist noir writer.
In some ways, this novel is like “Catcher in the Rye” meets “In Miso Soup.” After
all, J.D. Salinger was an adult who wrote about being a runaway kid and
Japanese author Ryu Murakami wrote about an American mass murderer loose in
Tokyo. Kirino was in her mid-fifties when she wrote “Real World.” So perhaps
this is just a cautionary tale that confirms the worst stereotypes of Japanese
high school life. I would have felt different about “Real World” if it had been
written by a woman who was in her twenties. Still it resonates as true when one
of the girls tells her BFF that “With death staring me in the face, I finally
understand the reason novelists write books: before they die they want
somebody, somewhere, to understand them.” In the end, don’t we all in the real
world.
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