Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

The English-language debut of one of Japan’s most talented contemporary writers, selling over 650,000 copies there, Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction—many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual—and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently, more or less. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It’s almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action... A brilliant depiction of an unusual psyche and a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.

“Even when I'm far away, the convenience store and I are connected.”

Omg, this book was actually SO FUN, and yet so provocative at the same time. I will say, though, I felt like this book is probably best appreciated by readers who have spent some time in Japanese, or minimally an Asian community and culture, because there was a lot of satire about the social structures, prejudices, and biases that are still fairly rampant in society and culture here. I also got bonus points of appreciation because Japan is probably my most visited holiday destination and I have an extremely vivid memory and impression of their convenience stores, and the visceral experience it is shopping in them as well as the almost robotic-like standard of service their staff never fail to emulate.

Keiko Furukura has always had trouble pretending to be human. It's not that she's an alien or anything, this isn't a sci-fi or fantasy book, but she's always had trouble understanding the underlying social codes, etiquette, and behaviour. She might be written to be autism-coded, but it's not definitively labeled in this book. In any case, quite often her thought process sounded like an AI going through deep learning to behave more like a human being so that she could fit into society. Despite this though, her narrative voice was personable, often relatable, and overall genuine and sincere in her wish to feel like an accepted part of society, as well as not to hurt the people she at least appreciated for having been kind to her in the past, like her sister.

“When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don't have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual.”

So, Keiko takes great joy in her job as a part-time convenience store worker, a job she has held for the past 18 years, since she herself was 18 years old. There is a very fixed set of rules guiding her behaviour, and she is valued for following those rules to a T. She enjoys how predictable everything is.

“It was fun to see all kinds of people... don the same uniform and transform into the homogenous being known as a convenience store worker.”

Despite finding joy and fulfillment in her job, she is still constantly being judged by her friends and family for “not being normal”, in that she is 36 years old and still in a “dead-end job” as a part-time convenience store worker. Without going into too much spoilery details, Keiko takes some steps to experience life as someone who is accepted into the fold of society.

There is definitely some satire and criticism here about the misogyny of society as well as the gender and sexuality stereotypes that is still deeply entrenched here. As someone who was born and raised in an Asian society, I think it hit pretty hard. It's easy to judge this book on more left-aligned values and find basically every other character in this book annoying except for Keiko, but I think it's a lot grayer than that over here. There's still a pressure to get into a relationship, to get a full-time job, to get married and have kids, even for me and even in this day and age. It might be a different experience from someone living in another country, especially if they were in USA or the EU, but differences in culture doesn't make any one culture less valid or more backward than the other. Anyway, being from a very similar culture to that of Japan, I could absolutely get the predicament Keiko was in and it hit much harder for me. There's also some commentary here about “normalcy” and how it feels like a performative act most of the time, just that for most of us it just comes more subconsciously than others (like Keiko, who has to make a much more conscious effort about it).

“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.”

Overall, I enjoyed this a ton but I'm not sure whether I'd recommend it to just about everyone. To anyone who is far removed from Japanese and Asian societies, this book might be quite bewildering and illegible (I hope it isn't, but I can imagine that it would be). Nevertheless though, it was quirky and had a sense of humour that had me chortling out loud at some parts, with a relatable and endearing though eccentric protagonist too.

I don't know how I was in the mood for this type of book. The last time I tried something similar (meaning slice-of-life, no angst), I couldn't get into it, but Convenience Store Woman pulled me in. I could relate to Keiko. We actually don't have much in common, but I could relate with society trying to 'fix' you, trying to dictate what you're supposed to do, projecting onto you, and I really loved the main theme of the book.

I liked Keiko very much from the start, I liked her peculiar way of thinking and doing things. Her method of doing things was very logical and she had a purpose and a path. Reading the book I loved discovering the way Keiko worked. Sayaka Murata really has away of drawing the reader in and getting the reader to care and be curious about what's happening. Highly recommend the book.

I get the point of this book but in the end I just thought it was a little... odd? I did enjoy Keiko's commentary on society and how everyone conforms to the same made-up rules though!

“As far as I was concerned, though, keeping my mouth shut was the most sensible approach to getting by in life.”

Keiko has always been different. Growing up she had problems understanding social norms, and her parents were concerned that she would always require an extra hand in life to get by. But soon after Keiko started going to university, she stumbled upon Smile Mart, a new convenience store opening up outside her train station. She was hired on, and spent the next 30-something odd years employed as a convenience store clerk. The same-ness of convenience store life appealed to Keiko, where there was an understandable pattern and flow to a workday. But everyone around her, from her parents to her friends to even her coworkers, felt that there was something wrong with her for not wanting something more for herself. Where was her permanent job? Her husband? Her kids? Troubled by this, Keiko decides to try and change these things about her to better conform with societal expectations... but things don't go as planned.

I really enjoyed the premise of this book! The thoughts and ideas the author puts forth about conformity and fitting in and “fixing” oneself were appealing to me, as was the description of Keiko's convenience store. Everything is the same, day after day, but not really when the product is constantly moving off the shelf and there's newness everywhere each day. This would have been a favorite of mine, if only...IF ONLY...Shiraha didn't exist. I know why he was needed in the story, but he was grating, he was dismissive, and his attitude really stunk. As soon as he was introduced and I saw where the author was going, I started losing steam in this book. Surely there were other ways of getting the same points across without having to read through his rantings about the Stone Age.

But this is a short book, and honestly the themes were really interesting to think about. As someone who is also in a part-time position voluntarily (but not for the same reasons), I identified with what Keiko was dealing with.