GROTESQUE
By Natsuo Kirino
The word "grotesque" literally signifies the kind of art that comes from the
grotto. The grotto in question was not a real grotto or cave, but the remains of
Nero's unfinished palace that were discovered in the fifteenth century. The
frescoes and wall decorations that received the label grotesque were noted for
their unnaturalness, depicting fanciful, distorted forms that blended animal and
vegetable elements with purely imaginary creations. Grotesque as it is used
today retains these original connotations, but its meaning has oozed a bit over
the years, coming to stand for anything ugly, monstrous, or out of the ordinary.
The title of this novel refers to the way a group of four Japanese women are
perverted and made into monsters, grotesques, by sex, greed, and conformity. Graduates of the
same highly-regarded girls' high school (Q High School for Young Women), they become the playthings of a grimly
naturalistic fate that eventually casts them into a criminal underworld of
prostitution and murder.
The typical formula for naturalistic fiction is that a character's fate is
the result of hereditary and environmental forces. Its heroes and heroines are
first and foremost victims, even if they sometimes take on the role of predator
in the social jungle. They are less individuals than products. And the process
that shapes their fate is also one that can warp and deform them. They are born
outsiders, and by attempting to fit in to what is presented as the natural
(acceptable, legal) order they are inevitably destroyed.
Grotesque begins with the main narrator - a dull person whose name
people can't seem to remember - pondering the mysteries of how genetic material
is shared in the process of conception, which is the logical place for a
naturalistic novel to begin. It is also a logical concern of the narrator's
because she is "half": the offspring of a Japanese mother and European
father. And the mystery of heredity is even more of a fixation for her because
her own life is so dominated by the presence of her younger sister Yuriko, a
girl so "diabolically beautiful" she is a "monster."
What really sets the ball rolling, though this isn't revealed until near the
end, is the curiosity of a biology teacher at Q High School with a passion for
insects and bugs. One immediately thinks of Zola's vision of the naturalist
author as scientist treating the novel as a kind of laboratory experiment for
studying effects. Yuriko applies to the Q School but isn't nearly bright enough
to get in. Professor Kijima, however, seeing "the potential of conducting a
biological study of what happens when a mutant member of a species is introduced
into a population," gets her in. The results are disastrous. Yuriko, a
man-hating and frigid nymphomaniac, becomes a glamorous child prostitute. This
in turn plays havoc with the frail psyche of Kazue, a pathologically conformist
overachiever whose passion to control her life lead her on the familiar downward
spiral of physical degradation, humiliation, crime, and a squalid end.
Shifting between different points of view, from a
framing first-person narrative to diaries to letters to police reports, Kirino
creates a complex feminist portrait of contemporary Japan as a fatal
psychological environment from which there is no escape. Within that environment
some are born monsters and others warp themselves. But even in the latter case
the naturalistic specimen is still a victim. This perspective complements
Kirino's bleak view of Japan's misogynist culture. No matter how independent and
intelligent they may seem, a woman needs what only a man can provide. And so
they are driven to become whores. But the feminist message isn't entirely
persuasive. The men we meet seem to only be introduced to provide basic basic
plot functions. Instead, the role of prostitute is a reflection of something
larger, a way of imagining naturalism's view of the individual as product taken
to its logical extreme in a super-consumerist and conformist society. One where
the pure products of capitalism go grotesque.
Notes:
Review first published online June 4, 2007.
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