#polly barton

In the Japanese of the past, rather than using the phonetic katakana alphabet to write the names of foreign places as is done now, each locale was assigned its own kanji exonym, which carried a specific meaning, but also conveyed the way it sounded to the ear. Berlin, for example, was 伯林: “chief” and “grove”; Cologne was 歌倫: “song” and “ethics.” Dresden was 徳停: “virtue” and “stop”; Munich was 民顕: “citizens” and “appear.” These kanji, chosen because they most closely matched the sounds of the word, changed one’s impression of a place in a peculiar way—sometimes delightfully so. Thus for me, Berlin’s kanji painted a picture of forests owned by the Margraf—the military governor of the border provinces—which would stage great hunts in fall, and the forests would be dotted by horses that galloped through at the sound of a whistle or the bark of a dogs. In the music festival in Cologne, its name indicated, the judging would be carried out on the basis of both musical talent and moral virtue. Then there was Dresden, where monks were plotting a mass escape, and Munich, where a popular movement had caught on and had turned revolutionary. My internal map was colored by the scraps of the narrative that these Japanese place names projected onto it. In this old schema, Göttingen was written as moon, sink, plain—an open plain into which the moon was sinking. This beautiful, somehow melancholy combination of characters resonated with the Japanese fixations with the moon and with nature. Written in kanji, the name—月沈原—carried within it the power to spirit one away to a far-off location. The row of three quiet letters seemed to me both like a mask that the city had worn, and another face of the city woven into the fabric of time.

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa made huge waves in Japan. In a country that "works on the understanding that disabled people don't exist within society," Ichikawa published a 90-page punch of a book that depicts Shaka, a woman with congenital myopathy who uses a ventilator and wheelchair, but whom is unrepentantly alive and insists on being visible, writing online erotica for work and day-dreaming about ways she could use her body if she had the "correct blueprints," from sex work to getting an abortion. Now translated by Polly Barton, this Akutagawa Prize–winning book is now available in English.

Ichikawa herself has congenital myopathy, and she imbues this book with unapologetic and raw realism about what it is like to live in her body. It is one of the boldest things about the novel: amidst all the smut, what is likely to most turn off non-disabled readers is the simple facts of her daily existence, like how much mucus she needs to suction out of her throat on any given day. She describes Covid-19 precautions and fear, shares that her room has a brilliant view of Mount Fuji that she cannot see most days because her head does not turn to the right, and gives us a view into the day-to-day of even the best-funded (by her parents' inheritance) care homes, where the care-givers themselves don't have enough support or struggle with their own chronic pain. She describes being alienated from much disability activism because accessibility rarely applies to her; talks about disability justice movements in Japan; and points out ableism in the publishing and reading worlds.

And yes, amidst all that she also writes erotica, tweets daring things, and chases her dream of having sex, becoming pregnant, and having an abortion, something only non-disabled people with the "correct blueprints" usually get to do, acting out a choice for her body that she'd like to be able to have. It's a strange, bold novella that challenges many preconceptions. Out March 18.

When I read a book my spine would bend, crushing my lung, puncturing a hole in my throat; when I walked I banged my head – to live, my body breaks.

What is the difference between taking life from a body like that, over a body that flourishes to exist?

She perched a sliver of butter on top of the rice. From one of the sachets of soy sauce that came with convenience store bento boxes and which tended to accumulate in her apartment, she squeezed a single drop into the bowl. Just as instructed, she moved the butter and some rice to her mouth before the butter had a chance to melt. The first thing Rika felt was a strange breeze emanating from the back of her throat. The cold butter first met the roof of her mouth with a chilly sensation, contrasting with the steaming rice in both texture and temperature. The cool butter clashed against her teeth, and she felt its soft texture right down into their roots. Soon enough, just as Kajii had said, the melted butter began to surge through the individual grains of rice. It was a taste that could only be described as golden. A shining golden wave, with an astounding depth of flavour and a faint yet full and rounded aroma, wrapped itself around the rice and washed Rika's body far away. It was, indeed, a lot like falling. Rika stared down intently at the bowl of rice with butter and soy sauce and let out a long sigh, feeling her breath rich and milky.