You see, on a small island with strict customs, your fate is determined by the family you are born into. Now I make my home among the dead, here in this realm of darkness. Born on an island far, far to the south, I was barely sixteen when I died. My name is Namima – “Woman-Amid-the-Waves”. However, from her very first words we learn of the sorrow to come: Set in ancient times, the book takes us to Japan’s most far-flung island, where the narrator, Namima, is growing up in a tropical paradise. It’s this story that Kirino works from in her 2008 novel The Goddess Chronicle (translated by Rebecca Copeland). However, their life together came to a close when Izanami was hurt giving birth to the god of fire, and she eventually ended up trapped in the underworld as the goddess of the realm of death. The first gods to take human form, they created the islands of Japan, and many minor deities, with Izanami actually giving birth to them (an interesting take on the idea of a mother country, with the goddess actually being the country’s mother…). One of the most famous of the Japanese creation myths is the story of Izanami and Izanaki (often written as Izanagi).

It’ll be a familiar story for many, but once again there’s a rather feminist slant to it all… The latest stop on our journey through female writing in Japan sees her looking back into pre-history. Natsuo Kirino is better known in English for her crime fiction, such as the gory thriller Out, but she obviously also has an interest in other genres. After our last post helped us finish the millennium in style, today’s review sees us moving on with the first review from this century.

In natsuo kirino