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ReviewCannibalism with casual couplings, human body parts turned into furniture – madness is the new normal in Sayaka Murata’s short stories

Normal is not eternal, Murata reminds us in her recounting of a ‘life ceremony’ where loved ones eat a dead relative and couples have casual couplings

That’s one of several strange episodes the Japanese writer describes in a weirdly matter-of-fact tone in her new collection of short stories, Life Ceremony

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Sayaka Murata poses after being awarded the Akutagawa Prize for her novel Convenience Store Woman in 2016. Her new short story collection, Life Ceremony, offers startling snapshots of madness made to seem normal. Photo: Kyodo News Stills via Getty Images

Published: 7:15pm, 30 Jul 2022

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata, pub. Grove Press

“Normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.” So muses a fateful bystander in “Life Ceremony”, the title tale in Sayaka Murata’s new collection of short stories.

The life ceremony, a macabre celebration concocted by Murata – author of Convenience Store Woman (2016), for which she won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, and Earthlings (2018) – is a reaction to a world with declining birth rates and conservative attitudes to sex, echoing Japan’s current predicament. Her first short story, “A Clean Marriage”, included in this edition, deals with a similar sentiment, in which an asexual couple discover an extreme way to conceive.

Life ceremonies are alternative funerals whereby dead people are eaten by their loved ones. At these events couples meet and are encouraged to go outside for casual insemination (the word sex is no longer used), a simple circle of life.

The cover of Murata’s short story collection.

The central character, Maho Iketani, questions this reality, gaslit by its prevalence and acceptance despite remembering 30 years ago that the thought of eating human flesh was abhorrent. Normal is not eternal.