Sep 25, 2026 · 23 min · 8 segments
**Listen to more of The Big Story here:** http://swap.fm/l/wi-bigstorypod-feeddrop The novelist makes the Earthly rituals of sex, marriage, childbirth—and all of human life—appear delightfully…
The novelist makes the earthly rituals of sex, marriage, childbirth, and all of human life appear delightfully outlandish.
By the time I meet Sayaka Murata on a recent afternoon in June, the back of my linen dress is damp.
It's an oppressively humid summer day in Tokyo, the sun hidden by a thick blanket of gray, and we're taking a stroll at the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, a one-hundred-sixteen-year-old park that becomes dense with crowds during the sakura blossom.
Today, visitors are sparse.
It seems we're the only ones foolish enough to be out at noon.
Looking at Murata's long collared black dress and black tights, I feel even hotter, but she seems unaffected, apart from a gentle glisten across her forehead.
Maybe the subtle sheen is a source of pride for Murata, I think.
After all, she's not sure her body works like those of other humans.
"In high school, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't sweat," she says.
"Even now, I feel like my body and I don't understand each other." Murata, the author of more than a dozen novels and story collections, writes often from this place of alienation.
Many of her female characters feel distant from their bodies, both in mechanics and in purpose.
In 2016, Murata published Convenience Store Woman, a novel narrated by a contentedly unambitious Smile Mart worker who achieves greater fulfillment performing her rote duties as an employee than aspiring to marriage or motherhood.
Convenience Store Woman was a national bestseller that year, winning Japan's prestigious Akutagawa Prize, and nearly every year since, and it has sold one point five million copies worldwide.
Earthlings, Murata's second novel to be translated into English, is about a woman whose alienation is literal.
She believes she's an extraterrestrial disguised as a human.
In July, Murata published Life Ceremony, a new story collection in which she concocts grotesque social rituals.
In the title story, funerals are occasions to eat the dead, to expose the absurdity of the corporeal norms we've all become desensitized to.
Though she is unlikely to use either term, Murata's fiction might best be described as speculative feminist.
The worlds she invents are future-looking without adhering to the tropes of science fiction.
Her scenarios horrify without leaving the daylit quotidian spaces of home and office.
She devises bizarre social experiments that unfold in seemingly familiar worlds and implants unhinged fantasies inside otherwise unrebellious women.
Her characters navigate domestic arrangements that distort the smooth image of marriage, childbirth, and family life like a funhouse mirror.
As in a funhouse, her tricks amuse and delight.
Reading her books, I often find myself scream-laughing out loud, then doing a double-take.
Did I really just read that? While she is sometimes outrageously gross, she's rarely merely so.
The novelist makes the earthly rituals of sex, marriage, childbirth, and all of human life appear delightfully outlandish.
By the time I meet Sayaka Murata on a recent afternoon in June, the back of my linen dress is damp.
It's an oppressively humid summer day in Tokyo, the sun hidden by a thick blanket of gray, and we're taking a stroll at the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, a one-hundred-sixteen-year-old park that becomes dense with crowds during the sakura blossom.
Today, visitors are sparse.
It seems we're the only ones foolish enough to be out at noon.
Looking at Murata's long collared black dress and black tights, I feel even hotter, but she seems unaffected, apart from a gentle glisten across her forehead.
Maybe the subtle sheen is a source of pride for Murata, I think.
After all, she's not sure her body works like those of other humans.
"In high school, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't sweat," she says.
"Even now, I feel like my body and I don't understand each other." Murata, the author of more than a dozen novels and story collections, writes often from this place of alienation.
Many of her female characters feel distant from their bodies, both in mechanics and in purpose.
In 2016, Murata published Convenience Store Woman, a novel narrated by a contentedly unambitious Smile Mart worker who achieves greater fulfillment performing her rote duties as an employee than aspiring to marriage or motherhood.
Convenience Store Woman was a national bestseller that year, winning Japan's prestigious Akutagawa Prize, and nearly every year since, and it has sold one point five million copies worldwide.
Earthlings, Murata's second novel to be translated into English, is about a woman whose alienation is literal.
She believes she's an extraterrestrial disguised as a human.
In July, Murata published Life Ceremony, a new story collection in which she concocts grotesque social rituals.
In the title story, funerals are occasions to eat the dead, to expose the absurdity of the corporeal norms we've all become desensitized to.
Though she is unlikely to use either term, Murata's fiction might best be described as speculative feminist.
The worlds she invents are future-looking without adhering to the tropes of science fiction.
Her scenarios horrify without leaving the daylit quotidian spaces of home and office.
She devises bizarre social experiments that unfold in seemingly familiar worlds and implants unhinged fantasies inside otherwise unrebellious women.
Her characters navigate domestic arrangements that distort the smooth image of marriage, childbirth, and family life like a funhouse mirror.
As in a funhouse, her tricks amuse and delight.
Reading her books, I often find myself scream-laughing out loud, then doing a double-take.
Did I really just read that? While she is sometimes outrageously gross, she's rarely merely so.
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