By the time they reconnect, all Natsuki has is a hopeful resignation that “the Earthlings would succeed in brainwashing” her.Īs the novel progresses, we learn that some “bad monsters” inhabit very human bodies, and no amount of extraterrestrial magic can protect Natsuki from their wrenchingly transformative power. I’m always doing battle with them to protect the Earth.” Yuu is the person with whom Natsuki is closest, perhaps because he, too, seems receptive to this other world, but that shared fantasy adumbrates a far more transgressive sharing that ultimately rips Natsuki’s extended family apart and separates the two cousins for many years. He bestows upon Natsuki certain magical powers that help her survive the daily tribulations she faces, such as the demeaning treatment her mother metes out to her and, as Natsuki puts it to her cousin, Yuu, “Bad magic, monsters, that sort of thing. This knowledge comes from her best friend, a nondescript stuffed animal she calls Piyyut, who tells her that he is from the Planet Popinpobopia, on assignment here by the Magic Police to save Earth.

Natsuki refers to the people around her as “Earthlings” because she is sure that aliens exist. Readers are asked to consider the forces that impinge on those labeled as “different” and how that intersection might occasion a multiplying effect which further marginalizes those who do not hew to society’s norms. Rather, we are asked to consider the forces that impinge on those labeled as “different” and how that intersection might occasion a multiplying effect which further marginalizes those who do not hew to society’s norms. Here, Murata interrogates the transgressive potential of difference, yet we do not sense, in that exploration, the expected condemnations. Earthlings is a much darker work, building upon themes that privilege violations of taboos, some quite traumatic, to weave a tale that, in its conclusion, is about as different from Convenience Store Woman in tone as one might imagine. That, however, is where the similarities end, and this is why it is well to resist the easy comparison to Murata’s earlier novel.

She resolutely adopts a lifestyle that rejects such a regimented life and, in so doing, ensures that she will be the locus for society’s ire. Indeed, Natsuki, the protagonist of Earthlings, is waging a long-term battle against “The Factory,” her term for the myriad social expectations and constraints that serve to channel “Earthlings” into the dual roles of productive economic cogs and breeding receptacles for future cogs. To be sure, the two novels share a focus on people who live at the margins of a stereotypically conformist Japanese society. Readers will naturally and, perhaps, unfortunately, wish to make connections between Sayaka Murata’s (b. 1979) newest novel, Earthlings, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove Press, 2021), and her wonderfully quirky Convenience Store Woman (which I previously reviewed for WLT).

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata