Legend of Japanese science fiction Izumi Suzuki’s dystopian short stories, in first English translation, play on gender relations and overpopulation
- The characters in Terminal Boredom inhabit a range of worlds, often overpopulated and with dystopian policies to address the problem of too many people
- Science fiction is often said to reflect the time in which it is written, and Suzuki’s covers population concerns, youth ennui and gender relations
Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki (translated by Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi and Helen O’Horan). Verso
Izumi Suzuki was a “model and actor” in so-called pink films (soft pornography), a “counterculture icon” and legend of Japanese science fiction, whose life was intense and death tragic. Terminal Boredom is intended to be the first of a series of her books to be translated and published in English, with a second collection already in the works.
Of course, one should not judge a book by its cover or an e-book by its filename, but why – if you wanted a new readership to discover these works – would you name the collection Terminal Boredom (after the final story of the seven)? With this first appearance of the tragi-iconic Japanese author in English, the collection title might have highlighted other, non-boring aspects of Suzuki’s concerns: “Women and Women” or “You May Dream”.
As one character in the title story comments, “No s***, Sherlock.”
To be fair, even in “You May Dream”, the second story in this collection, endless ennui would describe the petulant and moodily impatient narrator. The story establishes a crowded world where the Population Department administers a Population Control Act coercing people into cryosleep. Dowdy, overweight Yoshiko (the narrator’s frenemy) says it straight: “They can call it cryosleep all they want, but it’s death – they’re putting these people to death.”
Whereafter, the cryosleeping appear in the dreams of a chosen friend – imagine a 1970s hybrid of the films Inception (2010) and Being John Malkovich (1999).
Yoshiko receives the unwelcome slip from the Population Department, and together she and the narrator wander the subconscious:
I had no way of knowing if we were getting any closer to an exit, but I kept on walking. All I found were identical doors, floating amid the same unchanging light.
– Looks like your mind’s a real mess. Is she taking the p***?
– Yeah, who knew I was such a labyrinth.
This is a thoroughly likeable and engaging book, despite or because of its sometimes affectless narrators. They people a range of earths and worlds, often overpopulated, and the dystopian elements are “solutions” to overpopulation: locking all the men away in the GETO (“Gender Exclusion Terminal Occupancy zone”), in “Women and Women”; cryosleep in “You May Dream”; having all the teenagers sit in rooms staring at their devices or out looking for trouble, in “Terminal Boredom”.
Speculative fiction is often said to reflect the time in which it is written – consider Orwell’s response to totalitarianism or the current generation of cli-fi (climate fiction) works and writers. As well as population concerns and youth ennui, Suzuki’s stories reflect on gender relations – both the brutality and comedy.
Women in their late teens wash their hair excessively. They stand in front of the mirror, trying on tons of different clothes. Sometimes they go on dates
In “Women and Women”, Yūko and her sister Asako are raised by Grandma, who remembers when men were part of society. Their mother is in prison for harbouring a man, for having natural sex. At night, Yūko, too, sees a fugitive boy in the street, Hiro. She reaches out for him and eventually they go to his hideaway, where she tells him, “[…] the males have to be kept in the GETO. If they were allowed to roam free, the radiation or whatever it is they emit would make all the women around them pregnant.”
He laughs, tells her his own sad story, but then forces himself on her. “I spent the rest of that day learning the unexpected, dreadful truth about human life,” says Yūko of the rape. “Learning it with my body.”
Suzuki explicitly addresses the constructedness of gender in “Night Picnic”, where a family seemingly isolated on another planet and surrounded by monsters, attempt to learn gender roles from books and magazines, like some irradiated version of The Jetsons. As Dad puts it, “As Earthlings, it’s our responsibility, regardless of the time or place, to carry on our way of life. To be the very model of a family.”
It’s hard work for Sis, trying to be the very model of a teenager, but her brother has done the research. “So, what am I supposed to do?” she asked reluctantly.
“Well, women in their late teens wash their hair excessively. They stand in front of the mirror, trying on tons of different clothes. Sometimes they go on dates”, [says Junior].
Six translators have brought their different approaches to the stories in this collection, and it’s occasionally uneven – “disinterested” instead of “uninterested”, for example – though reading in English it is hard to know what was in the Japanese original (I hope “No s***, Sherlock” was!) For the most part, any roughness is part of Terminal Boredom’s charm.
