After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. . I was feigning calm, but my voice came outhigher than normal. "Life's not worth living if you're not tending to the whims and demands of a high-maintenance lover!". Histeeth must have been in their right place, because they made achamping sound as he chewed. I finished towel-dryingmy hair and stepped out onto the balcony to bring in the laundryId hung out that afternoon. A day goes by, and the clerk, who stays all night, offers the woman every piece of clothing in the store, then buys her clothes from another boutique to try on. She has won numerous Japanese literary and dramatic awards, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Mishima Yukio Prize, the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, the Kishida Kunio Drama Award, and the Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award. With frank sincerity, Motoya makes the exhausted clichs of marriage and intimacy literal, and thus, energetically strange. Id expected marriage to be an even more constricting flowerpot than my previous relationships. Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder is a refreshing reminder that fiction is an elastic medium, capable of stretching into new and surprising shapes. Youknow, I think pears might be my favorite fruit, he announced. No one in Yukiko Motoyas new story collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder, appears capable of seeing herself in the mirror. I thought perhaps the gamegot more interesting the longer you played, but whenever I lookedover my husbands shoulder, the screen always looked the same. "Why I Can No Longer Look at a Picnic Blanket Without Laughing", trans. Story Comes From Place: On Site Fidelity by Claire Boyles, Jasmine V. Bailey On Places Ive Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown, Art Edwards MEDIA REVIEWS. . Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. She endures this at first but later partakes in it, finding herself pulled into her husbands orbithis daily consumption of variety shows and deep-fried food. The unsettling way people can lose themselves to mundanity and wrestle to reclaim their selfhood is best illustrated in the novella-length An Exotic Marriage. Originally published on its own, it earned Motoya the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2016 and was translated for this collection. The positioning of his features was deteriorating faster thanever. In a brilliant analogy, she compares marriage to a snake ball: There are two snakes, and they each start cannibalizing the other ones tail. The Lonesome Bodybuilder For the first time in months, his hand crept into my bed, undermy comforter. Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder is available from Soft Skull Press. Was that the fault of the soil, or did the problem lie in the roots? The narrator, reasoning that she must be lonely, what with her entire family having been killed by an evil gang, asks her out, only to find that his new girlfriend is psychotic and in love with her dad. [4] From 2005 to 2006 Motoya was the Friday host for Nippon Broadcasting System's late night radio show All Night Nippon. Yukiko Motoya ( , Motoya Yukiko, born July 14, 1979) is a Japanese novelist, playwright, theatre director, and former voice actress. What happens then?, Yeah. Weight: 196 g. Dimensions: 196 x 126 x 26 mm. 'These arresting, hyper-real stories linger in the imagination . Theres a Jungian undercurrent in Motoyas writing, which seems to prize self-actualization as a way to mendor endtroubled relationships. [21] Nilanjana Roy, in her review for the Financial Times, concluded that "Yukiko Motoyas shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you". Her husband, who bears the brunt of these jabs, deserves it all (and more). My husband seemed anxious to make a snake ball with me. The course of that career certainly indicates a restless curiosity. Each of these titles represents an energizing alternative to the ripped-apart illogic of our contemporary reality. Okay, I heard a muffled voice say. Husbands and Wives Magically Morph in a Japanese Story Collection, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/books/review/lonesome-bodybuilder-yukiko-motoya.html. Unlike the alienation other characters face within the context of relationships, she is literally all alone, but this only strengthens her sense of self. I didnt say what I was thinking, but he must have sensed it. Motoyas protagonists feel quietly radical in a literary moment that seems particularly interested in unpacking various forms of narcissism. [5] She appears in the ending sequences of FLCL during credits, in which she's listed as model. I didn't like that story much at allit shouldn't have been in this collection. Her work has been adapted multiple times for film. 209 pages. How to Fix Transistor Radios and Printed Circuits, DR. D.T.R.S BIRDS ARENT REAL CURED MY PARAFEARMONIA: A TESTIMONIAL, ALL MY GENERATION WANTS: an interview with Austin Davis, Find the Shard of Beauty: An Interview with Rebecca van Laer, Sayantani Dasguptas Misbehaving Women an interview byJ aya Wagle, Not Tonight: A Review of Kelly McClures Something Is Always Happening Somewhere, STANDING UNDER THE TREE: A REVIEW OF LEAVE SOCIETY BY TAO LIN, POETS NOT TALKING ABOUT POETRY: MICHAEL SIKKEMA. San isnt the only woman in Motoyas stories who feels neglected and vaguely undefined. Motoya sets a scene involving several hundred couples engaged in a melee defying all imagining by inventorying the screams, the clash of weapons, men begging for their lives from lovers who seemed beyond language, belated confessions of love The story concludes in a tragedy, but its later reversed by a single line in a different story. When you did that, I knew youd probably eat up my poop with a smile too.. () Motoyas talent for voice informs her first-person narrators, both female and male, who have a genuine vulnerability and convincing matter-of-factness as they veer into the fantastic." Premium access for businesses and educational institutions. How could he even see straight? Used with permission of Soft Skull Press. Oh, those, my husband said, turning his shoulders towardme. I recalled seeing a circular in the mailroomabout plans to prune the plantings. The husband, San explains, waited until after their marriage to reveal the depths of his incuriosity. . I was secretly impressed by Hakones story. These stories, tinged with magical elements, see characters toeing the line between independence and isolation: A teardrop of blood or a shape-shifting rock can unmask deep-seated realities that theyre tempted to ignore in favor of unfulfilling marriages and quotidian chores. You can still enjoy your subscription until the end of your current billing period. [2] After completing high school, Motoya moved to Tokyo to study acting, and won a voice acting role in the Hideaki Anno anime adaptation of Kare Kano, but switched her focus to writing after a teacher praised a short play Motoya wrote for the school's graduation ceremony. No, I said. She admits that she has lost confidence in herself, living with a perfectionist husband (who doesn't pay that much attention to her, long oblivious even to the dramatic physical change she undergoes). Both women, at the service of their partners desires, are reshaped by othersan easy way to become a stranger to yourself in Motoyas world. His misperception becomes literal: he cant grasp whats right in front of him. I gave up and cleared the table andwent for a bath, but when I came back, my husband hadnt moved. [30], In 2013 Motoya married the poet, lyricist and film director Kite Okachimachi. During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. On Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal, Lisa Hiton Tortured partnerships are a favorite target for the award-winning Japanese novelist and playwright, whose work has been published in English in literary magazines such as Granta, Tender, and Catapult. "), and dedicates herself to it, with considerable success. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [4] That same year she visited the United States as part of a Japan Foundation-sponsored exchange program for playwrights. On Asylum by Jill Bialosky, Jehanne Dubrow Soft Skull Press. Motoya was born in snowy Ishikawa Prefecture on the Sea of Japan but later set out for Tokyo, where she completed an acting course and worked as a voice actor for a spell before deciding to zero in on writing novels and plays. We have to accept that were responsible for the physical effects theyre experiencing! a man yells, as the narrators girlfriends lips produce their own lipstick; the narrator tearfully euthanizes her. I fled from thetinkling of coins falling and the suckling sound of him chewingon dried squid. Empire Gold : A Review of Claire Meuschkes UPEND, John Wall Barger Poems That Linger: Peter Campions One Summer Evening at the Falls, Johannes Gransson Snake ball! Its when Motoya is on the rocky terrain of collapsing relationships that her strangeness finds the friction it needs to stick." Like that actress from the movies., How did he split up with a person like that and end up marrying you?. There was a tremor in my hand holding the paring knife. What if thereends up being more of the bad? Her coach's admiration for bodybuilders suggests the reason she was drawn to it, even if she wasn't initially aware of it: 2019-2021 the complete review And in The Dogs, the protagonist gains a sort of freedom, but this sunders threads both social and psychic; something ambiguously terrible rises in their place. Motoya founded her own theater company and has also set aside time for various other endeavors, like hosting a radio show and a televised documentary series. or The narrator of An Exotic Marriage notices that she and her husband are beginning to look alike, but her husbands investment in game shows is the greater threat to her happiness and autonomy. When I thought about whether the thing that had started tomove on top of me was my husband or just something like him, Ifelt a terrible dread and kept my eyes firmly shut. [15], In 2016, on her fourth nomination, Motoya won the 154th Akutagawa Prize for her story Irui konin tan (Tales of Marriage to a Different Sort), in which a wife discovers that she and her husband look more and more alike as they grow older together. [26], Nobuko Tanaka of The Japan Times has called Motoya "the darling of Japanese media" for her frequent contributions to Japanese magazines, television, and radio. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, Many unusual things happen in The Lonesome Bodybuilder, a new collection by the Japanese author Yukiko Motoya. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. Her books have been published or are forthcoming in French, Norwegian, Spanish, and Chinese, . There was no response. These stories are pointed, possessed by a defiant and often violent spirit. There are two snakes, and they each start cannibalizing the other ones tail. Motoyas book beguiles with its reversals: the bodybuilders husband may be unobservant to the point of eeriness, but, as it turns out, she is the shape-shifter, the trickster. My husband looked up from the iPad for the first time in awhile, and what I saw nearly made me shriek and run from theroom. There seems to be an essential despair of heterosexual partnership in these storiesnot that they suggest that a just and joyful partnership is an impossibility! Youd just gotten braces, and you said the metal hurt and you couldnt eat anything. And they eat and they eat at exactly the same speed, until theyre just two heads making a ball, and then they both get eaten up and disappear. Yeah. My husband nodded while sucking on a strip of dried squid. You don't always know what you're getting into when you pick up a book. 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