Breasts and Quarantine,
an essay
by
COVID-19 came to Japan early, but late. Early, because Prime Minister Abe made moves to close schools and cancel large events from February, but late because people were still free to go out, drink, party, and potentially spread the virus up until April 7th, when Tokyo officially went into a state of emergency.
Throughout February and March, although I was well aware of the existence of the virus and I wore a mask throughout most of my days, life went on normally for me. I wasn’t in school, and I wasn’t planning on participating in any large events. During my free days, I often went drinking and eating with my friends at izakaya (Japanese-style bar-restaurants) and planned nabe (Japanese hotpot) parties at my house and friends’ houses. By the end of March, I saw the upticks in viral infections. The numbers went from an average of 10 infections to 50, all within a span of a week. I spent one last meal out with a close friend the second to last week of March, and that was the last time I would eat out for months.
From the beginning of April, I spent the majority of my time inside of the three-story share house I lived in with five other people. Three were my friends, two were simply people I coexisted with. We lived in Shinjuku, a sprawling mini-city within Tokyo, home to one of the largest and densest train stations in the world. Before the virus, Shinjuku had everything— Karaoke bars, clubs, Michelin-starred restaurants, and even a giant Godzilla head that occasionally breathed fire into the city. Red-faced businessmen would often waddle away from the Godzilla head towards the station in a drunken stupor, too intoxicated to realize they had lost their briefcases and neckties. Young girls in perfectly curled hair and extravagant makeup would line the sides of the streets, holding signs, ushering these same drunken businessmen into their bars, hoping to 2 profit off of their irresponsibility. Shinjuku was never boring. There was always something strange or fascinating to see.
Unfortunately, the state of emergency released by the prime minister transformed Shinjuku. In a blink of an eye, it was now ill advised to venture outside.
The many stores and bars and restaurants that made Shinjuku what it was, abruptly closed their doors. There were sheets of white paper plastered on windows everywhere that notified customers of the closing, asking them to wait just one month, when the state of emergency would be lifted. Suddenly, the drunken businessmen were nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, the young girls stopped lining the streets of the bar district. Suddenly, Shinjuku went quiet.
With Shinjuku under silence, my housemates and I obeyed the advisories in place and stayed within our quaint home. From mid-March, my home state of New York was flaring red on the digital world map due to high numbers of daily infections.
I was constantly in contact with my family back home in New York, messaging them on LINE to make sure they were safe and away from the virus. Every night, I lied in my bed with my family worries floating above my head, lingering, until finally, I was released into sleep. Every day I wondered if this would be the day that someone in my family gets sick with the coronavirus.
Being thousands of miles away from my family, I felt helpless. I couldn’t fly home, as that would heighten the risk to my parents, but I also couldn’t stop thinking about what was happening in New York. As a coping method to keep my thoughts from getting out of hand, I started spending my time reading everything I could about the coronavirus. The only way I could think of helping my parents was to understand what was happening and keep my family updated on new information regarding this novel virus. Each day, the time I’d spend reading online material seemed to increase. Eventually, it became an obsession of mine to learn about the virus. I wanted to know everything about the pandemic, both in the US (primarily New York at the time) and even in Japan. I clicked through articles on Medium, in the New York Times, in the New Yorker. I started religiously following a COVID-19 blog started by a Nobel Prize-winning Japanese scientist. I watched Japanese news programs hours and hours everyday. Back problems developed from sitting hunch-backed in front of my computer and my TV all day long. Through these long hours, eyes glued to the screen, I tracked the movement of the virus, and kept an up to date tab on the new findings of scientists.
However, what I mostly learned was, Japan was failing the fight against COVID-19 in many ways. After the first few weeks of the virus infiltrating New York, my family quickly adjusted to their new lifestyle of quarantine. Seeing them safe and indoors allowed some space to shift priorities and worry more about what was happening in the city I was currently living in. The news wasn’t too good. In a mega-city with a dense population of over 14 million, at the peak of the virus in April, Tokyo was completing on average, 1000 tests per day. The number of people tested per day was never disclosed. While a state of emergency was in order, people were still free to go about their usual daily routine. While many restaurants and bars in Shinjuku closed, there were also many still open. Foot traffic went down close to 40% during mid-April, but during my walks around my home in Shinjuku, I found it challenging to properly distance myself from others— there were simply too many people on the streets.
Reading about the failures of the Japanese government was depressing, especially because of the relationship between media and the central government here. Sometimes, after a long bout of reading and watching the news, I would silently drag my body up the stairs back into my bedroom, and collapse sideways into my bed. Reading about Japanese politics and their coronavirus response leeched the life out of me. No newspapers or reporters were reporting on the failures of the Japanese government. I realized that hard-hitting journalism didn’t exist in Japan. The media is given a list of news to report on, and no one goes further than that. Even newspapers and news companies seemed content with reporting on the bare minimum. Having such limited media and information made me feel unheard. No information I found online reaffirmed my worries or feels, nothing gave me the warm nudge on the shoulder, telling me my concerns were valid. Japan’s lack of a diversified media made me feel alone in my struggles during quarantine.
My feelings of loneliness were enhanced by the inability to step out of my mind and distract myself with the things I loved doing. I couldn’t physically see my friends, I couldn’t do more than go on walks with housemates. My COVID obsession began to fade, as I realized that it was only exacerbating the problem. One day, I sat in my pajamas in front of the TV and watched a special program that discussed the negative mental health effects of living through a pandemic. People were suffering from the quarantine blues, or as it is called in Japanese, jishukuzukare. I walked over to the bathroom. Taking a good look at my pale, haggard face in the mirror, I immediately self diagnosed. Indeed, I was struck with a case of the quarantine blues. I was tired of staying inside of my house everyday.
I couldn’t give up on quarantining, but I knew a change was needed to help get me through each day. To slowly heal myself from the stresses of quarantine and living in a pandemic, I did what I had always done when feeling blue: I read. I read in my bedroom, I read in the park near my house, I read in the day, and I read through the night. Novels had a healing power, and I needed to channel it to overcome my jishukuzukare. In Japanese, jishuku means self-restraint, and zukare means tiredness. So, put together, the word literally means tiredness from self-restraint. With novels, I could undo my self-imposed restraint and explore new ideas and places. It was through this practice of reading and reading, that I stumbled upon a particular writer. Upon reading a brief biography of the writer, I instantly knew she would be the potent cure to my loneliness. Mieko Kawakami would be the one to to get me out of my quarantine funk.
My encounter with Kawakami came about in a peculiar way. I was reading the New York Times when I came across a review of her translated novel, Breasts and Eggs. While I had tried my best to immerse myself in modern Japanese literature during my time in Japan, I had never heard of Kawakami, nor had I heard of this book. The review had me sold. I wanted to read the novel in its original Japanese.
To keep our jishukuzukare at bay, my housemate and I would often take long midday walks around the area together. That day, he agreed to walk with me to the bookstore so I could buy my Kawakami novel. We were blessed with beautiful weather in April, and this day was no different. The sun had begun to beat down on the concrete sidewalks. There was no need to wear sweaters and long-sleeve T-shirts anymore. I carefully applied on some sunscreen on my face, neck, and arms, before slipping on my mask. By this time, putting on a mask had become second nature.
The walk to the bookstore was easy. We simply walked straight in the direction of the station for several minutes, and at a big crosswalk with a giant overpass, we turned right. Shinjuku can be incredibly confusing for first-timers and tourists, but after months of living in our cozy share house, my housemates and I were veterans. There’s a word in Japanese, tatsujin, that translates to “master.” We often referred to ourselves as “Shinjuku masters,” because we had walked almost the entirety of the district during our time in quarantine. A ten minute walk to the bookstore was level 1 difficulty for us. We even knew the side streets to hide inside of, in case we encountered any unmasked pedestrians.
Inside of the bookstore, the book was easy to find. I went to the “fiction” section of the store, and searched for her name. Luckily, due to Kawakami’s fame, there was a little tab sticking out with her name on it. I approached the tab, and scanned the books that sat next to it. I picked out the book titled, Chichi to Ran. This was Breasts and Eggs in the original Japanese1. After taking it to the cashier and checking it out, my housemate and I took a roundabout way back to the house to enjoy the beautiful April weather. The air was warm, but a friendly breeze kept our faces from feeling stifled inside of our face masks. Not a single cloud sat in the sky. Over our heads was an endless expanse of a deep and rich blue. Around us, the cherry blossoms had long withered away, but in its place, green leaves flourished.
Once we arrived home, I vigorously washed my hands and wrists for thirty seconds, took off my mask, and threw it in the trash. At the time, I was still apprehensive about using cloth masks. I knew they were more eco-friendly than one-use masks, but I was hesitant about using a cloth mask with no filter. I wanted to make sure there was no chance of me getting sick.
After the hand-washing and mouth-gurgling, I settled into my room. As usual during the month of April, I didn’t have a schedule, nor did I have any responsibilities. I could spend my day however pleased me. My excitement for Chichi to Ran had me opening the book the minute I sat cross-legged on my tatami floor. The book was a slim bunkobon (cheap, small paperback) that was actually a collection of short stories and a novella. The novella was Chichi to Ran, the book I was eager to read, but there were other smaller stories within as well. The shortness of Chichi to Ran surprised me, as the review in the Times had made it seem like a much longer story. Regardless, I shook the confusion off, and proceeded to start reading.
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1It turns out that Chichi to Ran is not the equivalent to Breasts and Eggs, despite the fact that “breasts and eggs” is a direct translation to “chichi to ran”. It appears Breasts and Eggs is a translated version of Natsu Monogatari, a more recent, full-sized novel written by Kawakami. However, many elements and direct paragraphs from Chichi to Ran have been implanted into Natsu Monogatari.
Kawakami’s novella tells a story of an unconventional family unit. Chichi to Ran revolves around Natsuko, an aspiring writer, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter, Midoriko. The novella goes back and forth between the narratives of Natsuko, and the diary entries written by Midoriko.
The novella begins with one of Midoriko’s diary entries. She starts with a few comments on eggs and sperm, writing, “Today I learned that women have ‘ova,’ as in ‘oval,’ which literally means egg. How is it possible I knew about sperm first? That doesn’t seem fair.” As the novella proceeds, Makiko tells her sister that recently, Midoriko has been refusing to speak. Even when spoken to, she does not respond verbally. All of their communication is done through a small little notepad Midoriko carries around with her.
Midoriko’s diary entries are dispersed as little interludes throughout the novella. But Kawakami mostly focuses on the narratives of Natsuko using a stream-of-consciousness style that allows readers to see into the mind of Natsuko. When Natsuko reunites with Midoriko and Makiko, she is alarmed at the appearance of both mother and daughter. When describing seeing Midoriko again, she hilariously equates Midoriko to a flamingo — slender and thin, with long legs that seem to start to divide from somewhere above the waist.
As the novel unravels, Midoriko writes more diary entries on periods and giving birth to children, while Natsuko struggles to understand Makiko and her determination to get breast augmentation surgery. As she listens to Makiko talk about different clinics and the different types of breast augmentation surgery, Natsuko’s mind wanders and she wonders why out of all the plastic surgeries Makiko could undergo, she would choose breast augmentation specifically.
Eventually, Kawakami reveals the reason behind Makiko’s obsession with breasts during a sisterly outing to the public bath. Makiko starts glaring at another woman’s breasts and proceeds to ask her younger sister what she thinks of Makiko’s breasts. Natsuko tries to evade her eyes, feeling uncomfortable with the question. Makiko repeats her question and asks her sister specifically, what she thinks of the color and size. Natsuko is unable to answer, and the older sister answers for her. The color of her breasts, in particular, seem to bother Makiko. She desires pink nipples, but she knows hers are dark.
Kawakami writes, “‘They weren’t always like this,’ [Makiko] assured me. ‘Not until I had a kid. Maybe they haven’t changed that much. I don’t know. But seriously, they were nowhere near this bad. I mean, what the hell are these? A couple of Oreos? Not even. More like black cherries.’”
In response, Natsuko is at a loss for words. She sits in silence next to Makiko inside of the public bath. In her silence, Natsuko wonders why nipples have to be cute or pretty. Why did people care so much about breast sizes and nipples?
In this awkward but realistic exchange between sisters, Kawakami brings to light a paradox that exists within Japanese society. Women are expected to have perky, pink, large breasts, and yet, they are expected to get married and have children. On Youtube and on blogs, there are countless videos and posts that provide “tips” to achieving more attractive breasts. On the other hand, there is the Japanese government, sending the message to women to have children to increase birth rates in Japan to halt its aging society. It can be overwhelming as women to have two seemingly opposing messages; for many women, birthing a child and having attractive breasts often do not go hand-in-hand. What is a woman to do? What is the “right” choice?
After completing the novella, I quietly closed the book and sat in contemplation. My room led out to a small balcony. The sliding door was open, letting the warm wind blow in. It was still midday and the sun poured its light into the small, tatami-floored room. I sat with my knees pressed up to my chest at the foot of my bed. The soft April breeze felt nice on my face and knees. Inside of my head, I echoed Natsuko’s question. What was the deal with people’s obsession with breasts?
Later that day, I went on my daily walk with my housemates. Sometimes we chat and discuss recent news we read, and sometimes we spend hours gossiping about our mutual friends. Other times, though, we enjoy our walks in silence. This time, as we walked out of our house in west Shinjuku towards a nearby neighborhood, Yotsuya, we walked in silence. The air was chilly, but the way the chill nipped at our skin kept our bodies from feeling sleepy or drowsy. The cool air kept my mind awake. As we passed building after building on a busy four-lane road, I thought about Japan, and women, and breasts.
Halfway through our walk, my housemate asked if we could stop inside of a 7-Eleven to get some snacks. My other house mate and I nodded our heads, and followed our friend into the convenience store. I didn’t feel hungry, and instead of the snacks, I looked at the magazine rack. While some magazines had front covers of cars or famous celebrities, most magazines had front covers of young girls in skimpy bikinis, their large breasts centered as the focus of the cover. I sighed. It seemed impossible to escape Japan’s obsession with breasts.
As we walked out of the 7-Eleven back towards our home, I thought of the ending of Chichi to Ran. Midoriko starts cracking eggs with her head, with Makiko joining her. When they run out of eggs, they ask Natsuko if she has anymore. Natsuko replies there are, and they start cracking eggs with their heads again, and the whole kitchen becomes a yolky mess. Midoriko finally starts speaking with her mom again, and Makiko decides against getting the surgery.
On our walk, we turned onto a small street leading up to our house. The sun was beginning to set, and the wind was picking up in speed. At this point in quarantine, I became greedy to do more than just walk around the neighborhood. I longed for a Japanese draft beer. I missed seeing my friends. Reading novels was a good start, but it wasn’t going to completely cure the quarantine blues.
I combed my hair back with my fingers and tied it up into a ponytail. As I touched my hair, I remembered Midoriko, and the dramatic egg-cracking scene. I imagined cracking eggs into my head. I looked at my housemates and imagined cracking eggs into their heads, too. Just like how Midoriko’s insane act of cracking a million chicken eggs into her head helped her resolve issues with her mother, I thought, maybe if we started cracking eggs into our heads, it would help resolve our quarantine blues, too. Maybe if we covered ourselves in gooey, slimy yolk, it would resolve Japan’s obsession over breasts. I let the image of my two housemates and I bathed in yellow slime sink into my head. I smiled. It made me feel a little better about what was happening in the world, in terms of both breasts and quarantine.