TERMINAL BOREDOM

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224 pages pages | Paperback/ebook

Author Izumi Suzuki

Publisher Verso

Izumi Suzuki is something of a countercultural icon in Japan. She posed for erotic photographer Araki, and her relationship with avant-garde saxophonist Kaoru Abe (who overdosed aged 29) inspired both a novel and its biopic adaptation, Endless Waltz.

This first collection in English of seven of her bleak, wry short stories (written between 1978 and her suicide in 1986) at times feels prescient. The title story, with its character who “puts a frame around everything I see” – reacting to a street attack by filming it – feels très 2021. But the indifference or nihilism of her protagonists also feels very of its “blank generation” era.

Suzuki tends to gaze, dead-eyed, at humanity from a distance, finding our structures absurd or arbitrary. “Night Picnic” embodies this approach best, following a family of four who turn out to be shapeshifting monsters playacting Earthlings.

Exposure to these alienated protagonists can prove enervating, and a focus on psychological states means none of the technological concepts – like a scheme to insert a consciousness into a loved one’s dreams – are explored in depth. Her tales can also be so abrupt that you suspect she bored of them – plus these translations (by six different people) occasionally strike a bum note. Ian Berriman