"You certainly didn't have it easy either, I heard myself say. First you get pregnant without you having to do anything, then you get a visit from an angel and whoever else else, while you must feel dying. "The Mother of God, who meets the company employee Shibata on Christmas Eve in a mosaic window on Tokyo's Ginza shopping street, will be her soul sister and inspiration: This is how Shibata came up with the idea of making herself with her mother even without a sexual relationship. Frustrated that she is the only woman who has to be the eternal caretaker and coffee maker in her company, she gives birth to the white lie that she is pregnant. And because of pregnancy sickness, she is no longer capable of those tasks. When the matter was discovered, it made waves in Emi Yagi's novel “Ms. Shibata's brilliant idea”. And also beyond fiction:In 2020, Yagi received the Dazai Osamu Prize for this.
Shibata thinks up a date of birth and writes a guide on how to prepare coffee for colleagues at her company who have no practical application (who make rolls of paper). She uses a pregnancy app, according to the specifications of which she stuffs her clothes and does gymnastics for an "uninhabited stomach". The book, which is divided into weeks of pregnancy, satirizes the "Mother and Child Health Manual" (boshi kenkō techō) that expectant mothers in Japan receive to record pregnancy and child welfare up to school age. Yagi gives insights into Japan's corporate culture, such as the harassment of pregnant women by superiors or after-work compulsory drinking among colleagues. But in Yagis between virtuality, reality and the surreal, changing novel is a lie that takes on a life of its own:"My stomach has been stirring a lot lately," notes the heroine.
Cracks in Japanese patriarchy
Yagi creates expressive images of leaden existence and machine people, analogies between factory production, in which paper loops are wrapped around a hollow core, and the childless body, whereby the fictional embryo is given the name Sorato ("empty person").
And incidentally, in Shibata's “Conversations among women”, with the Blessed Mother, the book criticizes the fact that Mary has to define herself solely through the Son.
The hedonistic Tokyo with its many single households contrasts with the old Japan with the parents' house in the provinces. But the patriarchy is cracking. Yagi symbolizes it through the "cacophonic sound hell" of the fight between the old grandfather clock and the girl band yelling from the television. The late growing up, which manifests itself in fear of attachment and a decline in the birth rate in today's Japan, is reflected in thought journeys to secret gardens and refuges of childhood. Yagi drafts a critique of the masses in a streamlined modernity: "I saw gray coats disappear in the entrances to the subway and still thought how much I hated all of this when I was already part of the current."
At the end, the pseudo-pregnant calls again “that woman in my mind, more out of a feeling of solidarity than out of faith”: “Although you would have needed a gynecologist or a nurse much more, only angels and sages came to visit you.” But also more two thousand years later, raising children in Japan is difficult due to a lack of crèche places, and strict requirements prevent admission. But before "I forget myself somewhere along the way, I want to create something for myself and be my own insurance, even if it is based on a lie" - or, in the case of Mary, on the Christmas story.
The ultrasound image of Shibata's fictional child fits in with the message of peace on Christmas night: It shows a baby making a peace sign.
And when you return to the company, your colleagues are cleared: everyone except the department manager can now make coffee.
Emi Yagi: "Ms. Shibata's brilliant idea". Novel.
Translated from the Japanese by Luise Steggewentz.
Atlantik Verlag, Hamburg 2021. 208 pp., Hardcover, 21 €.