Convenience Store Woman
Aug 30, 2023
I have recently been trying to read more, especially in place of watching YouTube videos (yes, the habit ebbs and flows). Browsing through my library's available books, I found Convenience Store Woman, written originally in Japanese by Sayaka Murata and translated to English by Ginny Tapley Takemori. The description drew me in right away: a woman reflecting on her purpose, questioning ambition, and trying to dissect the rules of society with almost alien-like confusion. I have struggled to unknot these exact topics repeatedly, once even on this blog.
Convenience Store Woman paints a vignette of Keiko Furukura, a 36-year-old woman who has worked in a convenience store since she was 18, when it first opened. She more than enjoys her job: it is her life's purpose. While nearly everything else in the store has changed over — the other workers, the managers, and even the store's inventory stock — she has been there, learning better than anyone else how it functions. Her deep understanding of its rules and routines is her main source of pleasure, since she has trouble grasping nearly any other aspect of society. In a series of flashbacks, she describes a few events in which she sensed that she did not act in the way others expected. In one, after finding a dead pet bird as a small child, she asks her mother to cook the bird since she knows her father likes to eat chicken teriyaki. When her mother offers to bury it instead, she can't understand the purpose of burial, and continues to insist on making teriyaki.
In the present day, Keiko works at the convenience store, fastidiously following its employee manual and imitating the patterns of speech of her coworkers. In her days off, she visits either her sister or her former college classmate. Both worry that she does not have a career or husband, but she is happy the way she is, having established a routine that works for her and learned how to behave to avoid being perceived as abnormal. However, during a barbecue hosted by her classmate, her carefully prepared social script finally fails as the other guests ask her if she has ever dated and why she hasn't married yet. Concluding that she will now need a man to continue fitting in, she offers to house Shiraha, another worker at the convenience store, who has recently been evicted from his apartment. From the outside, her friend and sister interpret this arrangement as romantic, though in practice she treats him like an obligation or a pet, and are overjoyed with the news. Although Keiko goes through the motions of appearing romantically engaged with Shiraha, even quitting her job at the store, she eventually realises that she does not want to be anything other than a convenience store woman.
It wasn't until after I had finished reading the book (a very short novella!), that I discovered it was extremely acclaimed. I can see why immediately — the writing style is a pleasure to read, and the themes are universal. Given its reception, what can I say about this book that hasn't likely already been said? Regardless, I wanted to write my initial reactions.
Fundamentally, I interpreted this book as deconstructing social expectations and conformity. Keiko does not understand the unwritten rules of society, neither at the level of interpersonal social interation, nor at the broader level of what is expected out of a person's life progression. Her observations of and struggles with these expectations forces us to examine them ourselves.
Since Keiko's "mistakes" as a child, she never says what she is truly thinking, and moreover just keeps silent unless she has a canned response, prepared by her sister, ready. Day to day, Keiko observes the behaviour of others nearly scientifically, often noting their contradictory nature. For example, she has noticed that her coworkers will brighten if she echos their anger, explaining that they would appear happier if she reacts with anger compared to positivity. In another passage, she acknowledges that her friends are more reassured with the explanation that she stays employed at the konbini because a chronic illness prevents her from having a career, rather than because she simply likes it. Her failed attempts at explaining many social patterns that most understand intuitively give the reader the perspective to question their unspoken validity.
Given her hyper-rational approach to understanding and interpreting social behaviour, readers have speculated that Keiko has autism. While I am happy that many autistic readers see themselves in Keiko and relate deeply with her, I think everyone can learn from her commentary. That she struggles with society's paradoxical conventions is both relatable and a call to reflection to all readers. I have spent countless hours anxiously trying to understand and taxonomise the unspoken conventions of social interaction. Over time, Keiko has learned to mirror the speaking and dressing patterns of her co-workers, a behaviour which may seem at first neuro-atypical, until she notes that everyone seems to do so. The only difference is that she approaches this mimicry with intention, while she surmises that most absorb their surroundings into themselves seemingly unconsciously. Her observations urge us to rethink the strength of our own identity and how much we may bend to the expectations of others, especially those of us for whom these adjustments come naturally. What has been the role of society in shaping each of us?
My speech is especially infected by everyone around me and is currently a mix of that of Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara. I think the same goes for most people. [...] And I probably infect others with the way I speak too. Infecting each other like this is how we maintain ourselves as human is what I think.
While the first half of the book focuses on the intracacies of ordinary social interaction, the second half zooms out and turns a critical eye on the larger expectations of society. Partway through the book, Keiko begins to receive signals that her existing social strategies, which her friends and sister seemingly tolerated before, are increasingly inadequate. They question when she will marry, or get a career, or do something beside live alone as a single women working part-time in a convenience store.
The different expectations on her — that she marry, have children, or pursue a career (in order of preference) — illustrate how larger social forces play out on the small scale, in social interaction. Though she is aware that her life is not enough for those around her, she does not want to marry or leave her job at the convenience store. Instead, Keiko comes up with a plan. She has observed that, when given a vague answer to a question, others will fill in the rest with whatever story is most in line with their own expectations. Based on this pattern, she offers to an evicted Shiraha that he live with her, anticipating that everyone will assume they are dating and on the track to marriage.
As expected, Keiko's friends and sister are overjoyed when they hear she is living with a man, immediately assuming that they are dating. Though Keiko expected this reaction from her friends, she is surprised by how her sister takes the news. Always having seen her sister as an ally in her quest to appear normal, especially as the source of her pre-planned answers and social script, she calls her sister once Shiraha has moved in to share her plan. Before she can explain that she and Shiraha are barely acquainted, her sister immediately congratulates her and asks if they will get married. Keiko is so taken aback by everyone's immediate yet abrupt relief that she realises they never saw her as one of them before. In their desperation to reconcile Keiko's behaviour that is outside the norm of social expectations, they never accept to see her as she truly is. Regardless which of the acceptable routes Keiko actually chooses, the main message is that society cannot tolerate Keiko living her life as it is.
Everyone seemed happier than when I'd told them I'd never been in love, and they were carrying on as if they knew everything about my situation. The previous me — who'd never fallen in love or had sex, who'd never had a proper job — had sometimes been hard to read. But everything about the new me — the one who had Shiraha living with her — was clear, even my future. Listening to my friends go on about me and Shiraha was like hearing them talk about a couple of total strangers. They seemed to have the story wrapped up between them. It was about characters who had the same names as we did, but who had absolutely nothing to do with me or Shiraha.
The subconscious refusal from both her sister and her friends to consider that Keiko may not follow the conventional path forces the reader to ask the deeper question of life's purpose, and society's role in its determination. The story asserts that, in the eyes of society, there are only two acceptable possibilities: to get married and have children, or to have a respectable career. The narrative underlines the centrality of these two options, since they are the only two presumptions filled in by Keiko's peers when she provides vague non-answers. For women, the first is the preferable route; for men, the second. Other readers have interpreted this book as a critique on gender norms, mysogyny, capitalism, and workoholism. These forces are undoubtedly present in the narrative, but I think the larger issue is how these paradigms and their accompanying rigidity are perpetuated through a society that expects conformity to its norms. Any principle, whether positive or negative in general, can become restrictive in a society that is either subconsciously or intentionally intolerant.
Indeed, the last section of this book contrasts how Keiko feels when she follows the path prescribed by her peers compared to when she does what she loves at the convenience store. Though she feels socially accepted when she appears to have a partner and begins applying to "more serious" jobs, she feels listless and empty. She describes her body as purposeless, seeing no point in eating, sleeping, or personal hygiene. Her emotions during this period are in stark contrast to her vibrating joy and enthusiasm when she works at the convenience store. The final pages of the book, when she wanders into the convenience store by accident and feels her mind reawaken, begs of the reader the simplest request: can't we allow everyone to choose their own life purpose based on how it feels internally rather than externally?