The owner of Makiko’s bar was a short and heavy lady in her mid-fifties. Really nice, the one time that I met her. Her hair was dyed or bleached, more yellow than blonde, and gathered in a fat bun on her crown. Makiko told me how during her interview, this lady had asked her the funniest question, pinching a Hope cigarette between her chubby fingers. I was wondering about the men in menarche. Turns out it’s the same as the men in menstruation. It means month, which comes from moon, and has to do with women and their monthly cycle. Moon has all kinds of meanings. In addition to being the thing orbiting the earth, it can involve time, or tides, like the ebb and flow of the ocean. So menarche has absolutely nothing to do with men. So why spell it that way? What happened to the o? But as far as I’m concerned, no one who’s ever been poor could think like that. A garden view? A nice big window? Who has a garden, though? And what the hell could make a window nice? You don’t have one? Makiko was baffled. Her tone made Midoriko turn around. What kind of apartment doesn’t have a balcony? We can stay tonight and tomorrow, but we’ve got to leave the day after that, so I can get to work that night.

Breasts and Eggs’ - The White Review Mieko Kawakami’s ‘Breasts and Eggs’ - The White Review

I still don’t really know why Makiko and her husband separated. I remember having lots of conversations with Makiko about her ex and whether they should get divorced, and I remember it was bad, but now I can’t remember how it happened. Makiko’s ex came from Tokyo, where he grew up. He moved to Osaka for work. They hadn’t been together very long when Makiko got pregnant. One thing I kind of remember is the way he called Makiko baby. Nobody talked like that in Osaka. They only said that in the movies. She reminded me of Mum. I couldn’t tell if it was just in the way that daughters start to look like their mothers over time, or if the things that happened to Mum’s body were happening to her now, too. I can’t tell you how many times I almost asked her, Hey, how are you feeling? Are you doing okay? but I always held off, not wanting to make her any more self-conscious. The weird part was, she had a ton of energy. She was used to her dynamic with Midoriko and talked to her like everything was okay, one-sided as it was. She gabbed away, so upbeat that it almost got to me. I remember telling this to someone once. I can’t remember who it was, but she really went off on me. Come on, though. What if you have one window, but it’s huge, with a garden view or something? You know, like one of those really nice big windows. How could that mean you’re poor? You only know what it means to be poor, or have the right to talk about it, if you’ve been there yourself. Maybe you’re poor now. Maybe you were poor in the past. I’m both. I was born poor, and I’m still poor.This kid was way too skinny. Her dark skin made the patches of psoriasis even harder to overlook. Gray shorts, legs as skinny as the arms poking from her turquoise tank top. Her lips were tight and her shoulders were stiff—she reminded me of myself as a kid. That got me thinking about what it means to be poor. Makiko laughed into the phone, trying to sound cheerful. But now it had been half a year. This was the way things were, and there were no signs of them changing. She pointed her jaw at the wall, where a pair of Chanel scarves hung like posters, under perspex, lit up in a yellow spotlight. To Makiko, who had never been a fan of reading, I’m sure it looked like I had tons of books, but I really didn’t.

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, Sam Bett | Waterstones

At first, I didn’t know what to do. I asked her a million questions but couldn’t figure it out. Something happened, obviously, but she won’t tell me what. Even when I yell at her, not a word. It’s a pain in my ass, but apparently she talks to everybody at school like normal … I bet it’s one of those things where kids blame everything on their parents. It’s a phase. It can’t last forever. It’s fine, it’s totally fine. Thirty-year-old Natsu lives in Tokyo, having moved from Osaka to pursue her dream to be a writer, when her sister Makiko and young niece Midoriko come to visit. But this isn’t a typical family reunion—in Mieko Kawakami’s novel, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, Makiko is in town to find a clinic for a breast enhancement procedure and, for reasons she can’t quite understand, her daughter has recently stopped speaking to her. In Midoriko’s silence, the women become attuned to their own fears related to growing older and their changing bodies. It’s a sharply observed and heartbreaking portrait of what it means to be a woman, in Japan and beyond. The second half of the novel finds the characters still grappling with these struggles 10 years later. In describing Natsu’s life as a childless woman at odds with an identity she did not anticipate, the novel highlights the anxieties that accompany contemporary womanhood in aching and wonderfully absurd terms.

Today in health class we talked about menarche. So basically, your first period. Pretty much everyone else has already had theirs, but that’s what we talked about, how it works and what’s happening in your body that makes you bleed. Then they told us about pads and showed us what the womb looks like. Lately, when other girls go to the bathroom, the ones who have had their period cling together and talk about things only they understand. Like they know the rest of us are listening and want for us to hear them. There must be plenty of girls who haven’t had their period yet, but I feel like I’m the only one left. Yeah. Pen and paper. Not talking. I mean, I still talk, but Midoriko writes me her responses. It’s been like that for maybe a month now. It’s kinda crazy how we’re sisters. I couldn’t care less about books. Midoriko reads them all the time, though. Right, Midoriko? I used one of your towels, she said, patting her hair dry. When I saw her with all her makeup off, I felt a little better. On the platform, I felt like I wasn’t even seeing my own sister. What a relief. I’d thought she was a walking skeleton, but she wasn’t half as skinny as I’d thought. She’d worn the wrong foundation, and way too much of it. No wonder she looked pale. Maybe she hadn’t really changed that much. It’s just that it had been so long since I had seen her. Maybe I overreacted. It had sure been a surprise, but everyone grows old, and I started thinking that maybe she looked her age after all.

Mieko Kawakami’s ‘Breasts and Eggs’ Is a Feminist Masterpiece Mieko Kawakami’s ‘Breasts and Eggs’ Is a Feminist Masterpiece

Wooooowwwww this book talking about women and also written by women sooo goooodddddd. Im gona give the hints: Kawakami, who exploded into the cultural space first as a musician, then as a poet and popular blogger, and most importantly as a best-selling novelist, challenges every preconception about storytelling and prose style. She is currently one of Japan’s most widely read and critically acclaimed authors, heralded by Haruki Murakami as his favorite young writer. An earlier novella published in Japan with the same title focused on the female body, telling the story of three women: the thirty-year-old unmarried narrator, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter Midoriko. Unable to come to terms with her changed body after giving birth, Makiko becomes obsessed with the prospect of getting breast enhancement surgery. Meanwhile, her twelve-year-old daughter Midoriko is paralyzed by the fear of her oncoming puberty and finds herself unable to voice the vague, yet overwhelming anxieties associated with growing up. The narrator, who remains unnamed for most of the story, struggles with her own indeterminable identity of being neither a “daughter” nor a “mother.” Set over three stiflingly hot days in Tokyo, the book tells of a reunion of sorts, between two sisters, and the passage into womanhood of young Midoriko. In this greatly expanded version, a second chapter in the story of the same women opens on another hot summer’s day ten years later. The narrator, single and childless, having reconciled herself with the idea of never marrying, nonetheless feels increasing anxiety about growing old alone and about never being a mother. In episodes that are as comical as they are revealing of deep yearning, she seeks direction from other women in her life—her mother, her grandmother, friends, as well as her sister—and only after dramatic and frequent changes of heart, decides in favor of artificial insemination. But this decision in a deeply conservative country in which women’s reproductive rights are under constant threat is not one that can be acted upon without great drama. Breasts and Eggs takes as its broader subjects the ongoing repression of women in Japan and the possibility of liberation, poverty, domestic violence, and reproductive ethics. Mixing comedy and realism, it is an epic life-affirming journey about finding inner strength and peace. Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami – eBook Details PDF / EPUB File Name: Breasts_and_Eggs_-_Mieko_Kawakami.pdf, Breasts_and_Eggs_-_Mieko_Kawakami.epub How old was she, though? Seventy? Older? Wait, hold up. That means she was the same age as Komi. She gasped at her own statement and opened her eyes wide. And she was raped, right? If you want to know how poor somebody was growing up, ask them how many windows they had. Don’t ask what was in their fridge or in their closet. The number of windows says it all. It says everything. If they had none, or maybe one or two, that’s all you need to know.

Everyone looks older as the years go by, but that’s not what I mean. She wasn’t even forty, but if she told you I just turned fifty-three, you’d wish her happy birthday. She didn’t look older. She literally looked old.

BREASTS AND EGGS | Kirkus Reviews BREASTS AND EGGS | Kirkus Reviews

My first visit to Tokyo Station was ten years earlier, the summer I turned twenty. It was a day like today, when you can never wipe off all the sweat.

I had no idea why. One day, Makiko said something to her, and she didn’t answer. That was it. At first she thought Midoriko was depressed, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She had a healthy appetite, went to school, and talked like normal with her friends and teachers. Just not with her mum. It didn’t seem like anything else was wrong. She just refused to talk at home. On purpose. Makiko had tried to figure out what was going on, treading carefully, but it was no use. Midoriko wouldn’t give her any hints. At first the two of us felt good enough to chat and laugh, but the heat soon got the better of us, and we stopped talking. The incessant spray of the cicadas clogged our ears, and the sunlight pinched our skin. The roof tiles and the trees and the manhole covers hummed with white-hot summer light, but the brighter it got, the darker everything appeared. By the time we made it to my apartment, the three of us were soaked in sweat. For poor people, window size isn’t even a concept. Nobody has a view. A window is just a blurry pane of glass hidden behind cramped plywood shelves. Who knows if the thing even opens. It’s a greasy rectangle by the broken extractor fan that your family’s never used and never will.