Mieko Kawakami's book Breasts and Eggs is the sum of two novellas published separately several years ago.
On a hot summer's day in Tokyo, two sisters are reunited when the elder, Makiko, travels to the city in search of breast-enhancement surgery accompanied by her sullen and silent teenage daughter, Midoriko. Over the course of their trip, Natsuko's small flat becomes a pressure cooker around them. All three are in the grips of their own battles, with the bodies that betray them year by year, with the way their class constrains them, and yet each also fears that one of the other women will be the thing to truly drag them under... Ten years later, we meet Natsuko again. Now a writer, she finds herself on a journey back to her native city, returning to memories of that summer as she faces her own uncertain future.
In Breasts, we follow three women: Natsuko (the main character), Makiko (Natsuko's sister), and Midoriko (Makiko's daughter). In her pursuit of happiness, and beauty, Makiko has set her mind onto getting breasts implant in a plastic surgery clinic in Tokyo while her daughter Midoriko, reflects on what it means to become a woman and whether menstruations can really be considered a rite of passage from childhood to womanhood. As for Natsuko, she wonders about her role in society and reflects on struggles women from the poor working class like her and her sister face every day in Japan. Despite the several questions raised about femininity, womanhood, women's poverty, social pressure (beauty at all cost) and body autonomy, this first novella simply doesn't offer real concrete answers or even resolutions.
In the second novella entitled Eggs, we meet Natsuko about ten years later who has decided to become a mother. This second story gets a little bit more profound as Natsuko ponders on the nature of ambition, filial love (also present in the first novella), and life.
Breasts and Eggs is an interesting book though it must be noted that it can also be very disturbing and gritty at times which was not what I expected from it and which, I felt, was a bit contrived.
Kawakami, M. Breasts and Eggs, London, Picador, 2020.