izumi suzuki Nobuyoshi Araki — Izumi Suzuki│© Nobuyoshi Araki

Izumi Suzuki has become a wide-spread name in the Western literary scene since the publishing of the short story collection Terminal Boredom in English translation in 2021 by Verso Books. Many readers have noted the relevance of topics explored in the science fiction (SF) stories, which is no surprise, as the worlds Suzuki paints are timeless capsules offering a critique of her experience in a gendered society that still exists to this day. The West, where discussions around gender expression and queerness are widespread, has welcomed the author’s legacy with open arms, but what is the place of her literature in modern day Japan?

Who Was Izumi Suzuki?

Suzuki was an actress and writer during the 70s and 80s, moving to Tokyo in 1969 from Shizuoka to pursue a career in writing. Being part of the second generation SF writers, she has been referred to as “the originator of ‘SF of manners’’, which is a subgenre that explores sensibility, as well as social norms and etiquettes. For Suzuki, the norms that felt most pressing and incomprehensible had to do with her identity as a woman, and what it meant to be feminine in Japan. She has expressed her frustrations, saying “I'm neither man nor woman, I don't need gender, and I want to go far away by myself.”

To her, being a woman in a gendered society was a means of being confined to certain standards and ideas: “Many girls of my generation have grown up on traditional morals. I don’t think you’ll find anyone who hasn’t heard the expression “what kind of a woman are you?” So I became enamored with all things manly.” What makes her fiction stand out is the lack of idealisation. She sees gender stereotypes trickling into not just everyday life, but queer relationships also. Having herself been involved with men and women, she felt trapped by the heterosexual nature of queer relationships where one woman had to be manly to make space for the femininity of the other. But beyond just this, the explicit exploration of lesbian relationships is something that still is unique in Japan, where same-sex marriage is yet to be legalised. It’s worth focusing on Terminal Boredom specifically to consider how her fiction remains to be revolutionary.

Terminal Boredom - Where Tradition Evaporates

Terminal Boredom features seven short stories, written in the period between the 70s and 80s. Thinking about the relatively conservative nature of Japan, it may be a shock to think that stories about a female-only society, or one where humans live in boredom with no purpose apart from watching TV were published at the time. In fact, around the 70s, Japan had adopted the women’s liberation movement, known locally as “uman ribu” (ウーマンリブ), which challenged gender and sexual norms, so while Suzuki’s writing was relevant, it still wasn’t the mainstream. The countercultural visionary was never even permitted to join the SF Writers Club due to her gender. The women who were fighting for gender and sexual norms at that time also formed women’s centres and cultural practices that would allow women to express their queer desires for one another. This is the world in which Suzuki’s ideas were flourishing.

The first story in the collection, “Women and Women”, is in a sense an upscaling of those women’s centres as it sets the characters in a world where the patriarchy has been crushed and women have taken over. Men are deemed dangerous, and lesbian relationships are the standard. We see characters freely expressing their queer affection, and when questioning why Suzuki’s writing feels so relevant, it is because in modern Japan, such freedom would still remain revolutionary. The main character’s friend, Rei, is said to be “writing letters to that actress every single day, sending her flowers even.” But even here, the women-only world is problematic. As Suzuki has expressed in an interview: “It’s called same-sex [relationship], but psychologically it is the same as heterosexuality, because ultimately there is a division into male type and female type.” Thus we come face to face with a dichotomy that a traditional woman should be feminine, and if not feminine, then masculine. A woman cannot simply be.

In another short story titled “Night Picnic”, Suzuki writes about a family of “earthlings”, who are the last humans to live on a planet attempting to live imitating what they imagine to be a “normal human family”. Their endeavour begs the question of why the nuclear family structure is correct and should be mindlessly followed. In one scene, the sister relates to her brother what she knows about being a woman: “Girls are supposed to eat yoghurt and fruit. Oh, and cheesecake.” Suzuki’s lighthearted prose brings attention to a bigger issue which she saw present in her society, but which continues to persist in modern Japan.

izumi suzuki terminal boredom — Terminal Boredom cover│cover photo by Nobuyoshi Araki

Izumi Suzuki’s Relevance To Modern Japan

In Japan, only 16% of executive positions in top firms are filled by women. Although feminism has come a long way, women are still confined to the stereotype of being mothers or wives, and while Suzuki’s work has been gaining significant attention since its translation to English, it is worth pondering whether that has to do with the more liberal nature of Western politics than that of Japan. Following Suzuki’s suicide in 1986, her work was largely forgotten until the literary critic Omori Nozomi’s appraisal in 2014: “Suzuki Izumi was the most important Japanese SF writer” because “she was the first in Japanese SF to impart sense of contemporaneity.” And indeed, it is now more than ever that her perspective feels relevant, with politicians worldwide straying towards conservative values.

In “Women and Women”, she also touches on the topic of environmental degradation, but even in doing so, her language points back to gendering: “Women have been left carefully husbanding the scant resources of a planet stripped bare by men.” It is reminiscent of her notions about the imposing heterosexualisation, with women taking the role of a “husband” in the absence of men. As the story’s female-only world is also not without its obstacles and the protagonist’s narrative shows an inner conflict in regards to segregation, the lesson is then in the importance of balance and equality.

The message that she leaves readers with is for people to be granted equal human rights not because they can act like “men” or “women”, but because they are all human. In Suzuki’s words: "I don't wish for the end of the Earth or the extinction of humanity. I just want everyone to live happily."

Text by Liza Glushak