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第169回芥川赏受赏。
选考会沸腾の大问题作!
「本を読むたび背骨は曲がり肺を溃し喉に孔を穿ち歩いては头をぶつけ、私の身体は生きるために壊れてきた。」
井沢釈华の背骨は、右肺を押し溃すかたちで极度に湾曲している。
両亲が遗したグループホームの十畳の自室から釈华は、あらゆる言叶を送りだす――。
选考会沸腾の大问题作!
「本を読むたび背骨は曲がり肺を溃し喉に孔を穿ち歩いては头をぶつけ、私の身体は生きるために壊れてきた。」
井沢釈华の背骨は、右肺を押し溃すかたちで极度に湾曲している。
両亲が遗したグループホームの十畳の自室から釈华は、あらゆる言叶を送りだす――。
96 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 22, 2023
176 people are currently reading
17.4k people want to read
About the author
Saou Ichikawa
1?book78?followersSaou Ichikawa graduated from the School of Human Sciences, Waseda University. Her bestselling debut novel, Hunchback, won the Bungakukai Prize for New Writers, and she is the first author with a physical disability to receive the Akutagawa Prize, one of Japan’s top literary awards. She has congenital myopathy and uses a ventilator and an electric wheelchair. Ichikawa lives outside Tokyo.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 583 reviews
August 20, 2024
July 26, 2016 is the date of one of the deadliest attacks in Japanese history. After breaking into a care facility in Sagamihara, just outside of Tokyo, Uematsu Satoshi murdered 19 disabled people, and injured a further 26. Actions he later justified as “mercy killings” of people he characterised as unable to fully participate in society. His victims received remarkably little attention in the mainstream media - compared to those who’d died in other killing sprees on Japanese soil. But the date, and aftermath of Uematsu’s crimes, retain significance for Japanese disability activists: eloquent examples of discriminatory attitudes and an accompanying culture of silence. These aspects of Japanese society are part of what Saou Ichikawa sets out to confront in her award-winning variation on a protest novel.
At the centre of Ichikawa’s semi-autobiographical novella’s narrator Shaka Izawa. Like Ichikawa herself, Shaka was diagnosed during childhood with a form of congenital myotubular myopathy and is now in her forties. Shaka’s an extremely wealthy orphan with a studio apartment in a group facility she inherited, named Ingleside in honour of her love of Anne of Green Gables. Ichikawa’s arresting narrative is set during the Covid pandemic, and presents a highly-detailed portrait of Shaka’s everyday life underlining the specificity of her situation: emphasizing her individuality rather than confining her to membership of an amorphous grouping dubbed “disabled.” The vast majority of Shaka’s time’s spent inside the apartment where an array of mobility aids and medical equipment supports her existence: allowing her to breathe without suffocating from the mucus constantly clogging her lungs. She has no visitors other than care workers and facility employees, although she sometimes eats in the facility’s communal dining room, eavesdropping on fellow residents. But Shaka’s keenly aware of her outsider status, someone who disrupts society’s rhythm in a Japan that works on the “basis disabled people don’t exist.” She wryly refers to herself as “monstrous hunchback.” She’s enrolled in in a distance-learning degree which has the added attraction of affording her the “acceptable” title of student.
However, Shaka has a series of secret online identities. She contributes ‘kotatsu’ articles, composed from secondary sources, promoting adult entertainment including ‘happening’ bars designed for anonymous sexual encounters. These writings overlap with fictional erotica, and provocative tweets related to Shaka’s frustrations, sex, and disability. A means for Shaka to experiment with, otherwise inaccessible, desires. But when care worker Tanaka links Shaka to her online personas, his attempt to use this information to extort money provides an opportunity to act on her fantasies. Through their transgressive interactions Ichikawa confronts taboos and stigmas surrounding explorations of disability and sexuality. But their vastly different economic status, comparatively-impoverished Tanaka versus ultra-rich Shaka, raises further questions of relative privilege and power: it’s never entirely clear who’s the abuser and who’s the abused in this relationship. It’s a complex, unsettling storyline which anticipates, and resists, any temptation to position Shaka as automatically without agency – an all-too-common assumption underlying numerous depictions of disabled people. Although Tanaka, with his overwhelming air of “ressentiment,” also conjures elements of the prejudice displayed by certain quarters of the non-disabled community.
Ichikawa’s influences include Kenzaburō ?e and Masahiko Shimada; like Shimada, Ichikawa’s unconventional novella plays with genre boundaries, framing Shaka’s narration with extracts from Shaka’s erotic journalism and fiction. A move which highlights the artificiality of narrative and forms of representation, feeding into Ichikawa’s own concerns about storytelling and disability. It's a gripping, erudite piece which touches on topics from reproductive rights and eugenics to mind/body dualism, to the exclusionary practices of a publishing industry that often shuns the e-book formats that make it possible for Shaka to read without pain. Ichikawa draws too on her research into the history of disability and Japanese literature; as well as paying homage to previous generations of disability activists and protestors including Tomoko Yonezu - famous for spraying the Mona Lisa with red paint while on display in Japan, calling attention to Tokyo National Museum’s policy of barring entry to anyone requiring assistance. Translated by Polly Barton.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Viking for an ARC
?
At the centre of Ichikawa’s semi-autobiographical novella’s narrator Shaka Izawa. Like Ichikawa herself, Shaka was diagnosed during childhood with a form of congenital myotubular myopathy and is now in her forties. Shaka’s an extremely wealthy orphan with a studio apartment in a group facility she inherited, named Ingleside in honour of her love of Anne of Green Gables. Ichikawa’s arresting narrative is set during the Covid pandemic, and presents a highly-detailed portrait of Shaka’s everyday life underlining the specificity of her situation: emphasizing her individuality rather than confining her to membership of an amorphous grouping dubbed “disabled.” The vast majority of Shaka’s time’s spent inside the apartment where an array of mobility aids and medical equipment supports her existence: allowing her to breathe without suffocating from the mucus constantly clogging her lungs. She has no visitors other than care workers and facility employees, although she sometimes eats in the facility’s communal dining room, eavesdropping on fellow residents. But Shaka’s keenly aware of her outsider status, someone who disrupts society’s rhythm in a Japan that works on the “basis disabled people don’t exist.” She wryly refers to herself as “monstrous hunchback.” She’s enrolled in in a distance-learning degree which has the added attraction of affording her the “acceptable” title of student.
However, Shaka has a series of secret online identities. She contributes ‘kotatsu’ articles, composed from secondary sources, promoting adult entertainment including ‘happening’ bars designed for anonymous sexual encounters. These writings overlap with fictional erotica, and provocative tweets related to Shaka’s frustrations, sex, and disability. A means for Shaka to experiment with, otherwise inaccessible, desires. But when care worker Tanaka links Shaka to her online personas, his attempt to use this information to extort money provides an opportunity to act on her fantasies. Through their transgressive interactions Ichikawa confronts taboos and stigmas surrounding explorations of disability and sexuality. But their vastly different economic status, comparatively-impoverished Tanaka versus ultra-rich Shaka, raises further questions of relative privilege and power: it’s never entirely clear who’s the abuser and who’s the abused in this relationship. It’s a complex, unsettling storyline which anticipates, and resists, any temptation to position Shaka as automatically without agency – an all-too-common assumption underlying numerous depictions of disabled people. Although Tanaka, with his overwhelming air of “ressentiment,” also conjures elements of the prejudice displayed by certain quarters of the non-disabled community.
Ichikawa’s influences include Kenzaburō ?e and Masahiko Shimada; like Shimada, Ichikawa’s unconventional novella plays with genre boundaries, framing Shaka’s narration with extracts from Shaka’s erotic journalism and fiction. A move which highlights the artificiality of narrative and forms of representation, feeding into Ichikawa’s own concerns about storytelling and disability. It's a gripping, erudite piece which touches on topics from reproductive rights and eugenics to mind/body dualism, to the exclusionary practices of a publishing industry that often shuns the e-book formats that make it possible for Shaka to read without pain. Ichikawa draws too on her research into the history of disability and Japanese literature; as well as paying homage to previous generations of disability activists and protestors including Tomoko Yonezu - famous for spraying the Mona Lisa with red paint while on display in Japan, calling attention to Tokyo National Museum’s policy of barring entry to anyone requiring assistance. Translated by Polly Barton.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Viking for an ARC
?
February 19, 2025
Here was I, feeling my spine being crushed a little more with every book that I read, while all those ebook-hating ablebodied people who went on and on about how they loved the smell of physical books, or the feel of the turning pages beneath their fingers, persisted in their state of happy oblivion.
This may only be around 100 pages long but it's one of the most confronting 100 pages I've read. The narrator, Shaka, suffers from a debilitating muscle condition that has made her housebound with a severely twisted spine crushing her lungs and limiting her movement. She's not looking for pity but is angry about the way she and other disabled people have been written out of Japan's national narrative.
But this book is more complicated than that because Shaka also details her embodied experience, putting her body on display for the reader so that I was caught between a horrible sense of my own curiosity and a shameful feeling of voyeurism that is acutely unsettling.
To ramp up the discomfort, Shaka is immensely wealthy - she owns the care complex in which she lives and can afford the technology she needs for her online writing life and to enable her second degree. She gives away her profits in a philanthropical move - but is herself suddenly confronted by one of the care workers who is badly paid and who wants some of her cash. The whole issue of different forms of privilege and disadvantage thus explodes into the narrative and creates a transaction dynamic where it's really not clear who is abusing or exploiting whom.
I appreciated the whole way Ichikawa opens up this subject matter, not least the issue of sex and desire. She also makes disability individualised in a productive way, while making us think more widely about how it may react intersectionally with other forms of privilege or its lack.
This isn't a comfortable book - and nor should it have to be. But it is uncomfortable in the best, widening, thought-provoking way.
Many thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.
March 3, 2025
A very short, very strange little novel that follows a woman who lives in a care home and pushes the edges of societal expectations especially for those living in bodies with disabilities. It's quirky and wry and also a bit charming at times. But I just felt that it wasn't quite enough material for me to love it. It was only 90 pages and explored some interesting ideas around inner peace, the physical versus spiritual, and the roles we play in a larger context. I just wish it had been a bit meatier to allow us to sit with character longer and continue to push these themes further.
March 10, 2025
Longlisted for International Booker Prize 2025 - It is so rare to encounter a person with a disability being sexual in a book. I only remember Mishima doing that. The sensibilities of the modern audience are different, but Hunchback also wants to shock and, maybe because it is so short, it doesn’t do much else. The comparisons with The Convenience Store Woman are an exaggeration, but there are some signs that it could have been more than just a curiosity.
April 16, 2025
Winner of the Akutagawa Prize 2023
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025
With her radical novella about the sexuality of a severely disabled woman, Saou Ichikawa, who herself suffers from , was the first physically disabled person to win Japan's most important literary award. In the text, we meet a woman who lives in a home for the disabled and works as a writer - and some critics around the world see themselves confronted with transgressive literature. Is this really the case, or are readers simply not used to the graphic depiction of severe physical disabilities? While studying at the prestigious , Ichikawa researched the representation of disabled people in literature, which inspired her to write "Hanchibakku".
Protagonist Shaka Izawa suffers from and lives in a group home called Ingleside (see ) which she owns - her parents left her a fortune. Shaka is a published author of -fluff, teen romance and porn, and she struggles with her own sexual desire, as society perceives profoundly disabled people as asexual if not non-existent. In a provocative spin, Shaka is possessed by the idea that she wants to get pregnant and have an abortion like a healthy woman - and she pays her resentful caretaker Tanaka to have sex with her...
Ichikawa employs graphic language and detailed descriptions both for the physical impairments (like the author, Shaka uses an electric wheelchair and a ventilator) and the sex scenes, and while the premise that this protagonist doesn't dream of a conventional family, but at least wants to have the same suffering and conflict as a healthy woman amounts to a shock effect comparable to one (who is the same age as Ichikawa), I have to say that I've never read such an intricate literary account of what it means to live in a disabled body - which says a lot about societal taboo and invisibility politics. The statement regarding abortion could of course also be read as a pure lashing out, as a dark joke, and the sex that is portrayed builds the classic bridge between sex and death, but with a new spin.
So yes, "Hunchback" is a critique of ableism rendered by a person who is directly affected, and thus its political and societal relevance can hardly be overstated, but it is also aesthetically savvy: Shaka's voice is haunting, oscillating between humor, anger, and exhaustion, which makes for a psychologically deep portrait without having the protagonist to spell out everything - it's there, between the lines. This is also a text about power, and in many ways: The power of money against the power of physical health, the power of men against women, the power of representation and telling one's own story against the power of invisibility and silencing.
There are several changes of narrator in the text and a phenomenal plot twist at the end, but I won't spoil any of that. Also, we get moody ruminations about , Wagner's , , feminist disability activist , etc. pp., until the whole thing takes a quasi-religious spin and culminates in...?! I mean: What's not to love?
Great, inventive, powerful stuff, can't wait to read Ichikawa's next work.
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025
With her radical novella about the sexuality of a severely disabled woman, Saou Ichikawa, who herself suffers from , was the first physically disabled person to win Japan's most important literary award. In the text, we meet a woman who lives in a home for the disabled and works as a writer - and some critics around the world see themselves confronted with transgressive literature. Is this really the case, or are readers simply not used to the graphic depiction of severe physical disabilities? While studying at the prestigious , Ichikawa researched the representation of disabled people in literature, which inspired her to write "Hanchibakku".
Protagonist Shaka Izawa suffers from and lives in a group home called Ingleside (see ) which she owns - her parents left her a fortune. Shaka is a published author of -fluff, teen romance and porn, and she struggles with her own sexual desire, as society perceives profoundly disabled people as asexual if not non-existent. In a provocative spin, Shaka is possessed by the idea that she wants to get pregnant and have an abortion like a healthy woman - and she pays her resentful caretaker Tanaka to have sex with her...
Ichikawa employs graphic language and detailed descriptions both for the physical impairments (like the author, Shaka uses an electric wheelchair and a ventilator) and the sex scenes, and while the premise that this protagonist doesn't dream of a conventional family, but at least wants to have the same suffering and conflict as a healthy woman amounts to a shock effect comparable to one (who is the same age as Ichikawa), I have to say that I've never read such an intricate literary account of what it means to live in a disabled body - which says a lot about societal taboo and invisibility politics. The statement regarding abortion could of course also be read as a pure lashing out, as a dark joke, and the sex that is portrayed builds the classic bridge between sex and death, but with a new spin.
So yes, "Hunchback" is a critique of ableism rendered by a person who is directly affected, and thus its political and societal relevance can hardly be overstated, but it is also aesthetically savvy: Shaka's voice is haunting, oscillating between humor, anger, and exhaustion, which makes for a psychologically deep portrait without having the protagonist to spell out everything - it's there, between the lines. This is also a text about power, and in many ways: The power of money against the power of physical health, the power of men against women, the power of representation and telling one's own story against the power of invisibility and silencing.
There are several changes of narrator in the text and a phenomenal plot twist at the end, but I won't spoil any of that. Also, we get moody ruminations about , Wagner's , , feminist disability activist , etc. pp., until the whole thing takes a quasi-religious spin and culminates in...?! I mean: What's not to love?
Great, inventive, powerful stuff, can't wait to read Ichikawa's next work.
Read
January 17, 2024I am glad I read it, but I never want to read it again.
Be ready, and I recommend you read this at least once because I am sure it will get translated into your language as well, and it is going to be all the rage: a novel about a woman with a serious physical disability written by a woman with the same serious disability. Well, it is not just about that though.
The protagonist (and the author herself) fully and absolutely rejects to either become an inspiration (typical) or pitied (also typical) for her/their disabilities. She is just fully human like anyone else. As simple as that, yet, fresh and powerful. Also, her depiction of the main character's resentment toward often unnoticeable but very real privileges of able-bodies is so real you can't stop thinking about it.
Why I never want to read this again is not because it is sad or depressing (the book is not), but because the sexual context is just as gross as some of the grossest books by which I am not a big fan of. (I like his non-gross books, FYI).
PS: not a spoiler, but the confusing ending... I read a few different reviews in Japanese, and my favorite interpretation of the ending is that the last part is the protagonist writing her own fiction. There are a few other interpretations, so you can pick what it suits you, but this was my favorite one which made the most sense to me. (The confusing ending was discussed during jurying of the Akutagawa Prize as well, which she ultimately won. )
PSS: this is so hard to rate, so I won't give it any stars for now.
Be ready, and I recommend you read this at least once because I am sure it will get translated into your language as well, and it is going to be all the rage: a novel about a woman with a serious physical disability written by a woman with the same serious disability. Well, it is not just about that though.
The protagonist (and the author herself) fully and absolutely rejects to either become an inspiration (typical) or pitied (also typical) for her/their disabilities. She is just fully human like anyone else. As simple as that, yet, fresh and powerful. Also, her depiction of the main character's resentment toward often unnoticeable but very real privileges of able-bodies is so real you can't stop thinking about it.
Why I never want to read this again is not because it is sad or depressing (the book is not), but because the sexual context is just as gross as some of the grossest books by which I am not a big fan of. (I like his non-gross books, FYI).
PS: not a spoiler, but the confusing ending... I read a few different reviews in Japanese, and my favorite interpretation of the ending is that the last part is the protagonist writing her own fiction. There are a few other interpretations, so you can pick what it suits you, but this was my favorite one which made the most sense to me. (The confusing ending was discussed during jurying of the Akutagawa Prize as well, which she ultimately won. )
PSS: this is so hard to rate, so I won't give it any stars for now.
April 8, 2025
It’s not often a book’s ending leaves me muttering, “WTF?!?!,” but Saou Ichikawa’s Hunchback left me reeling.
It threw me for such a loop, in fact, that I turned right around and reread the second half to try to make sense of it. Still confused, I then googled the book in an attempt to gain further insight into the ending but came up empty-handed. I’m not the only person dumbfounded, it seems.
Though I have thoughts on the ending and feel somewhat confident in my interpretation of the story’s final events, the last passage is so obscure and surprising that I’m still unsure about what I read. What I do know is, I enjoyed this short Japanese novella very much – a blunt, in-your-face story of a disabled woman living in a care home who fights for her autonomy and the freedom to experience life on her terms.
Because Ichikawa herself is disabled – like Shaka in the story, she has congenital myopathy and uses a ventilator to breathe and a wheelchair to move – she writes with great authenticity. She’s all about the body, and she doesn’t shy away from describing what it means to be disabled, the physical limitations of it. The reader is given a first-hand account of daily life, like how the ventilator is used and the indignity of being unable to bathe oneself. It will make you uncomfortable. Sex and reproduction are also of great interest to Ichikawa, and, in this regard, she taps into the voyeuristic nature of humans, somehow making me feel as if I’m privy to a story that perhaps I shouldn’t be.
But most compelling is the case the author makes for Shaka’s right to live and have unique experiences, despite and alongside her disability. What the character fantasizes about is unconventional to be sure – I foresee it riling up a number of readers – yet I found it to be provocative in the best way. A book like this, one that stirs discussion about the most difficult of topics, is good stuff.
I love what Ichikawa does here. I wish more authors wrote with the same courage and frankness.
It threw me for such a loop, in fact, that I turned right around and reread the second half to try to make sense of it. Still confused, I then googled the book in an attempt to gain further insight into the ending but came up empty-handed. I’m not the only person dumbfounded, it seems.
Though I have thoughts on the ending and feel somewhat confident in my interpretation of the story’s final events, the last passage is so obscure and surprising that I’m still unsure about what I read. What I do know is, I enjoyed this short Japanese novella very much – a blunt, in-your-face story of a disabled woman living in a care home who fights for her autonomy and the freedom to experience life on her terms.
Because Ichikawa herself is disabled – like Shaka in the story, she has congenital myopathy and uses a ventilator to breathe and a wheelchair to move – she writes with great authenticity. She’s all about the body, and she doesn’t shy away from describing what it means to be disabled, the physical limitations of it. The reader is given a first-hand account of daily life, like how the ventilator is used and the indignity of being unable to bathe oneself. It will make you uncomfortable. Sex and reproduction are also of great interest to Ichikawa, and, in this regard, she taps into the voyeuristic nature of humans, somehow making me feel as if I’m privy to a story that perhaps I shouldn’t be.
But most compelling is the case the author makes for Shaka’s right to live and have unique experiences, despite and alongside her disability. What the character fantasizes about is unconventional to be sure – I foresee it riling up a number of readers – yet I found it to be provocative in the best way. A book like this, one that stirs discussion about the most difficult of topics, is good stuff.
I love what Ichikawa does here. I wish more authors wrote with the same courage and frankness.
March 16, 2025
A novella featuring a main character who is suffering from myotubular myopathy, severely limiting her agency in the world and to be seen as a sexual being in society.
to live, my body breaks
allows us to follow the life of Shaka Izawa. In the care home, owned by her due to the inherited money of her parents, she lives a regimented life where infection and asphyxiation are permanent threats to her life. Reading physical books is torture and her studying is the only connection to society. Covid-19 doesn't make the situation any easier, and then one of her carers turns out to be a self-identified beta male and probable incel. Meanwhile her twitter and side gig as a writer of erotica contrast starkly to her chaste life. She is an interesting character, who directly comments on the expectations society projects on disabled people:
I had to assume that people didn’t know how to respond to a more or less bed-bound woman with a serious disability who’s constantly tweeting thing like: In another life, I’d like to work as a high-class prostitute.
Or:
I’d have liked to try working at McDonald’s.
Or:
I’d like to see what it was like to be a high-school student.
The intersectionality of her disability and her financial status is a tension that I haven't seen explored in other works, and with which the main character directly engages: I’m a 165 cm woman born to tall, attractive parents with platinum credit cards. If I wasn’t disabled, the world would have been my oyster… whatever that means.
Overall, I think I expected some more closure and clarity at the end of this prize winning book than what gives us.
Nonetheless a fascinating account that draws attention to the myriad ways the world is not inclusive to people with a disability.
Quotes:
If when moving about inside this one-room flat of mine, I always planned each and every movement meticulously before getting up.
He’s self-identifying as a beta male. He’s probably an incel! Fuck!
When you’ve got no money problems and plenty of health problems, you end up living a very chaste sort of existence.
To live, my body breaks.
Disabled people were not sexual beings - I had assented to the definition that society had created.
The appropriate distance between us was one that allowed him to pity me.
Being able to see; being able to hold a book; being able to turn its pages; being able to maintain a reading posture; being able to go to a bookshop to buy a book?–? I loathed the exclusionary machismo of book culture that demanded that its participants meet these five criteria of able- bodiedness. I loathed, too, the ignorant arrogance of all those self-professed book-lovers so oblivious to their privilege.
Here was I, feeling my spine being crushed a little more with every book that I read, while all those e- book- hating able- bodied people who went on and on about how they loved the smell of physical books, or the feel of the turning pages beneath their fingers, persisted in their state of happy oblivion.
The publishing industry is rife with ableist machismo. The world of sports, which all those literary types who play up their physical weakness display so much vitriol for, has in fact done far better at affording a space in its corner for those with?disabilities.
to live, my body breaks
allows us to follow the life of Shaka Izawa. In the care home, owned by her due to the inherited money of her parents, she lives a regimented life where infection and asphyxiation are permanent threats to her life. Reading physical books is torture and her studying is the only connection to society. Covid-19 doesn't make the situation any easier, and then one of her carers turns out to be a self-identified beta male and probable incel. Meanwhile her twitter and side gig as a writer of erotica contrast starkly to her chaste life. She is an interesting character, who directly comments on the expectations society projects on disabled people:
I had to assume that people didn’t know how to respond to a more or less bed-bound woman with a serious disability who’s constantly tweeting thing like: In another life, I’d like to work as a high-class prostitute.
Or:
I’d have liked to try working at McDonald’s.
Or:
I’d like to see what it was like to be a high-school student.
The intersectionality of her disability and her financial status is a tension that I haven't seen explored in other works, and with which the main character directly engages: I’m a 165 cm woman born to tall, attractive parents with platinum credit cards. If I wasn’t disabled, the world would have been my oyster… whatever that means.
Overall, I think I expected some more closure and clarity at the end of this prize winning book than what gives us.
Nonetheless a fascinating account that draws attention to the myriad ways the world is not inclusive to people with a disability.
Quotes:
If when moving about inside this one-room flat of mine, I always planned each and every movement meticulously before getting up.
He’s self-identifying as a beta male. He’s probably an incel! Fuck!
When you’ve got no money problems and plenty of health problems, you end up living a very chaste sort of existence.
To live, my body breaks.
Disabled people were not sexual beings - I had assented to the definition that society had created.
The appropriate distance between us was one that allowed him to pity me.
Being able to see; being able to hold a book; being able to turn its pages; being able to maintain a reading posture; being able to go to a bookshop to buy a book?–? I loathed the exclusionary machismo of book culture that demanded that its participants meet these five criteria of able- bodiedness. I loathed, too, the ignorant arrogance of all those self-professed book-lovers so oblivious to their privilege.
Here was I, feeling my spine being crushed a little more with every book that I read, while all those e- book- hating able- bodied people who went on and on about how they loved the smell of physical books, or the feel of the turning pages beneath their fingers, persisted in their state of happy oblivion.
The publishing industry is rife with ableist machismo. The world of sports, which all those literary types who play up their physical weakness display so much vitriol for, has in fact done far better at affording a space in its corner for those with?disabilities.
November 5, 2024
Such an interesting Japanese novella. Ichikawa takes many popular elements and tropes from Japanese fiction and presents them through a very uncommon protagonist, Shaka, a middle aged disabled woman. This is a bold book that is willing to dive into the grotesque and the titillating to force you to see Shaka not just as a human being but as a person who is capable of difficult and uncomfortable acts and thoughts and desires.
Writing about disabled characters is still so limited in the US, there is little to compare this book to. I thought of Greenwell's Small Rain several times, because this book is also very committed to detailing the minute acts of the body and what it requires. Ichikawa does not want to hide or obscure Shaka's body and what it requires, she is not trying to present Shaka as somehow more than or better than her body. She is matter-of-fact, which is its own form of rebellion.
Writing about disabled characters is still so limited in the US, there is little to compare this book to. I thought of Greenwell's Small Rain several times, because this book is also very committed to detailing the minute acts of the body and what it requires. Ichikawa does not want to hide or obscure Shaka's body and what it requires, she is not trying to present Shaka as somehow more than or better than her body. She is matter-of-fact, which is its own form of rebellion.
March 3, 2025
This is why we read books!!! Incredible and weird and risky and spicy and emotional and angry and funny. Fantastic.
Hunchback
@hogarthbooks - thank you for the review copy! Out March 18th.
Wise, wry, full of firecracker prose and acerbic wit, Hunchback does two things at once: it shocks the reader, sending you laughing at the book and at yourself as it simultaneously sends tightly controlled, searing blows at ableism.
Strangely enough, I think the best word for this novel is that it’s GENTLE. Gentleness holds a false connotation for timidity—when rather it is the effect of immense power and strength wielded with disciplined, delicate control.
I will say— Hunchback is The Timid Bookstagrammer’s nightmare: is someone out there brave enough to negatively review a book like this even when it all but blatantly, rhetorically asks you if Amazon is doing a better job at supporting those with disabilities than you are? If your bookshop strolling reels, your balancing high bookstacks on thin wrists, or your tall ladders and taller shelf porn are actually just symptoms of a much larger, deeper ingrained ableism that permeates all of book culture? Yeah. Come here to get called out when you’re ready for some introspection.
Lucky for me, this jumped right up to my top 3 of the year so far, so it’s going to get hammerpraised for the foreseeable JC future as I found it perfectly paced, exceptionally insightful.
Brash. Sexy. Disgusting. Hilarious.
I $%&?*ing loved it.
I’m lucky too, in that this hits about a million little personal things I just crave in a book as it hits all the notes of both a stark nihilism in chorus with a deep sense of humanism. Hunchback is that sort of novel for the underdog that anyone and everyone needs on their shelf. Instant classic, if you will.
The ending is (wild bonkers crazy insane out of left field blah blah blah) perfect. It’s a clear effort of hard won WRITING as it shows a deft flick of the wrist creating an incredible sense of ambiguity that brings the whole novel into a new light while it also spins it into a blurry unfocus. For this book, I stand firmly on the side of the ending being exactly right. Forget your “interpretation,” this stands alone as art by itself.
Hunchback
@hogarthbooks - thank you for the review copy! Out March 18th.
Wise, wry, full of firecracker prose and acerbic wit, Hunchback does two things at once: it shocks the reader, sending you laughing at the book and at yourself as it simultaneously sends tightly controlled, searing blows at ableism.
Strangely enough, I think the best word for this novel is that it’s GENTLE. Gentleness holds a false connotation for timidity—when rather it is the effect of immense power and strength wielded with disciplined, delicate control.
I will say— Hunchback is The Timid Bookstagrammer’s nightmare: is someone out there brave enough to negatively review a book like this even when it all but blatantly, rhetorically asks you if Amazon is doing a better job at supporting those with disabilities than you are? If your bookshop strolling reels, your balancing high bookstacks on thin wrists, or your tall ladders and taller shelf porn are actually just symptoms of a much larger, deeper ingrained ableism that permeates all of book culture? Yeah. Come here to get called out when you’re ready for some introspection.
Lucky for me, this jumped right up to my top 3 of the year so far, so it’s going to get hammerpraised for the foreseeable JC future as I found it perfectly paced, exceptionally insightful.
Brash. Sexy. Disgusting. Hilarious.
I $%&?*ing loved it.
I’m lucky too, in that this hits about a million little personal things I just crave in a book as it hits all the notes of both a stark nihilism in chorus with a deep sense of humanism. Hunchback is that sort of novel for the underdog that anyone and everyone needs on their shelf. Instant classic, if you will.
The ending is (wild bonkers crazy insane out of left field blah blah blah) perfect. It’s a clear effort of hard won WRITING as it shows a deft flick of the wrist creating an incredible sense of ambiguity that brings the whole novel into a new light while it also spins it into a blurry unfocus. For this book, I stand firmly on the side of the ending being exactly right. Forget your “interpretation,” this stands alone as art by itself.
March 3, 2025
Longlisted for the International Booker 2025
Outbursts that ran counter to society’s rules disrupted its rhythm. They startled people, in the same way that my ungainly limp did. Speaking about one’s desire to kill a foetus was of a different order of magnitude to the light- hearted dirty jokes of a 56- year- old man with a spinal cord injury. Of course, the tweetings of a hunchbacked monster would be more twisted than those of someone with a perfectly erect spine. With my eyes on the effortlessly straight spine of the young man pressing a peeled Kyoho grape into the mouth of the man who could only move from the head upwards, I snapped the backbone of the miso mackerel I’d just eaten cleanly in half with the tips of my chopstick.
Hunchback is Polly Barton's translation of the novella ハンチバック (a phonetic rendition of Hunchback) by 市川沙央 (Saou Ichikawa). The original won the 169th edition of the prestigious , one of the judges saying (as translated by the media) that "she critically dismantled social norms and etiquette through the use of the protagonist's difficulties" and another that it "critically knocks down conventional wisdom and common sense centered on able-bodied people", and the why it had taken so long for a person with a disability to win the prize.
This is a compact but powerful and provocative work, which the author has said is 30% based on her own experiences, but primarily fictional. There's a good take, based on the Japanese original but from a blog written in English, .
The narrator, Shaka Izawa, is in her early 40s (born in 1979, the novel is set in the early post-pandemic period). She suffers from a severe congenital myopathy, with severe S-shaped spinal curvature that leaves her with difficulties breathing. From a wealthy family (and conscious of that element of privilege) she lives in a care home which her parents created and bequeathed to her, which also caters for other patients.
Largely confined to her room and the home, she occupies her spare time with online studies (which enables the narrative to include various references to the literature on disability) but also with writing erotic fiction and (fictionalised) reportage, although she donates the money earned, which she doesn't need, to charity, all done under various alises:
These were the kinds of thoughts that pervaded my brain, whether or not it was experiencing an oxygen shortage. Yet in my daily life, I passed for the young, silent, serious disabled woman Shaka Izawa. That was why I kept on releasing into the world all those vulgar, immature, unreasonable thoughts via my Buddha and ?ākya accounts. Those words were born from the slimy, gunky sludge of the swamp, the mud out of which the lotus flowers grew. Without mud, the lotus could?not?survive.
Two pieces of her erotic writing, the first where she reports (as a man) on a visit to a swinger's club, bookend the story.
She also, under her own identity, sends provocative tweets, notably one which, after a thread discussing how she could conceive, even if she could not carry to term:
My ultimate dream is to get pregnant and have an abortion, just like a normal woman.
She sees this as reversing both the issues handicapped people in Japan have had getting reproductive rights, and recognising the activists, such as and who fought for it, but also the casualness with which people abort foetuses seen as abnormal:
What emerged from this was the foundation of the reproductive rights of disabled women, and Yūho Asaka’s Cairo speech, where she proclaimed that the state was robbing disabled people of their right to have children. In 1996, the law was finally amended to acknowledge that disabled people could also reproduce, but the developments in reproductive technology and its commodification have seen the killing of disabled children become a relatively casual undertaking for most couples. In time, it will doubtless become even cheaper, even less of an event. Given that, it wouldn’t matter if a disabled person tried to get pregnant specifically to have an abortion, right? Wouldn’t that finally balance the scales?
Another topic about which the narrator (and the author) is passionate, is ableism in the literary world, even in the very act of reading, where for her the very act of reading a physical book is literally suffocating:
Holding in both hands an open book three or four centimetres in thickness took a greater toll on my back than any other activity. Being able to see; being able to hold a book; being able to turn its pages; being able to maintain a reading posture; being able to go to a bookshop to buy a book?–? I loathed the exclusionary machismo of book culture that demanded that its participants meet these five criteria of able- bodiedness. I loathed, too, the ignorant arrogance of all those self-professed book-lovers so oblivious to their privilege.
[...]
Here was I, feeling my spine being crushed a little more with every book that I read, while all those e- book- hating able- bodied people who went on and on about how they loved the smell of physical books, or the feel of the turning pages beneath their fingers, persisted in their state of happy oblivion.
[...]
The publishing industry is rife with ableist machismo. The world of sports, which all those literary types who play up their physical weakness display so much vitriol for, has in fact done far better at affording a space in its corner for those with?disabilities.
Which makes for an interesting contrast with the also Booker longlisted whose antiquarian book dealer narrator won't buy a book until she's physically held it in her hands:
This is not a book for the faint-hearted. Many of us will be, rightly, skewered in our 'happy oblivion' to our able-bodied privilege; the narrator describes the mechanical processes and struggles simply to stay alive matter-of-factly but unsparingly, such as the constant need to suck out phlegm from her respiratory system; and the novel is sexually explicit, the last two coming together in one memorable scene , where she pays her male carer to have sex with her in pursuit of her 'dream' but first insists on performing oral sex on him. She finds the act itself straightforward, as she notes that, have a tracheotomy, she doesn't actually use her mouth or nose to breathe, but then nearly chokes to death on his semen which enters her lungs and hospitalises her.
But it's a book that needs to be read.
I would say a strong International Booker contender, but I wonder if it will be deemed too short (stoppress: fortunately these judges appreciate short books!)
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC
The judges' take
Who is permitted to feel – and be – desired? Saou Ichikawa’s short, razor-sharp novel – exquisitely distilled into English by Polly Barton – features a protagonist with disabilities who lives in a care home near Tokyo. Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spinal curvature, and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. She is, as the cool kids would say, ‘very online’ – tweeting passionately and posting erotic stories – and her anxieties range from the existential to the sexual. A provocative and powerful indictment of ableism and sexism, this unapologetic, unashamed and unflinching novel defiantly dismantles societal and moral assumptions about disability as it leans into pleasures of the body. In around a hundred pages, Hunchback grips the reader with its raw, fizzing, subversive energy, even as it shakes off shackles — both physical and mental. A book that moved and thrilled us.
Outbursts that ran counter to society’s rules disrupted its rhythm. They startled people, in the same way that my ungainly limp did. Speaking about one’s desire to kill a foetus was of a different order of magnitude to the light- hearted dirty jokes of a 56- year- old man with a spinal cord injury. Of course, the tweetings of a hunchbacked monster would be more twisted than those of someone with a perfectly erect spine. With my eyes on the effortlessly straight spine of the young man pressing a peeled Kyoho grape into the mouth of the man who could only move from the head upwards, I snapped the backbone of the miso mackerel I’d just eaten cleanly in half with the tips of my chopstick.
Hunchback is Polly Barton's translation of the novella ハンチバック (a phonetic rendition of Hunchback) by 市川沙央 (Saou Ichikawa). The original won the 169th edition of the prestigious , one of the judges saying (as translated by the media) that "she critically dismantled social norms and etiquette through the use of the protagonist's difficulties" and another that it "critically knocks down conventional wisdom and common sense centered on able-bodied people", and the why it had taken so long for a person with a disability to win the prize.
This is a compact but powerful and provocative work, which the author has said is 30% based on her own experiences, but primarily fictional. There's a good take, based on the Japanese original but from a blog written in English, .
The narrator, Shaka Izawa, is in her early 40s (born in 1979, the novel is set in the early post-pandemic period). She suffers from a severe congenital myopathy, with severe S-shaped spinal curvature that leaves her with difficulties breathing. From a wealthy family (and conscious of that element of privilege) she lives in a care home which her parents created and bequeathed to her, which also caters for other patients.
Largely confined to her room and the home, she occupies her spare time with online studies (which enables the narrative to include various references to the literature on disability) but also with writing erotic fiction and (fictionalised) reportage, although she donates the money earned, which she doesn't need, to charity, all done under various alises:
These were the kinds of thoughts that pervaded my brain, whether or not it was experiencing an oxygen shortage. Yet in my daily life, I passed for the young, silent, serious disabled woman Shaka Izawa. That was why I kept on releasing into the world all those vulgar, immature, unreasonable thoughts via my Buddha and ?ākya accounts. Those words were born from the slimy, gunky sludge of the swamp, the mud out of which the lotus flowers grew. Without mud, the lotus could?not?survive.
Two pieces of her erotic writing, the first where she reports (as a man) on a visit to a swinger's club, bookend the story.
She also, under her own identity, sends provocative tweets, notably one which, after a thread discussing how she could conceive, even if she could not carry to term:
My ultimate dream is to get pregnant and have an abortion, just like a normal woman.
She sees this as reversing both the issues handicapped people in Japan have had getting reproductive rights, and recognising the activists, such as and who fought for it, but also the casualness with which people abort foetuses seen as abnormal:
What emerged from this was the foundation of the reproductive rights of disabled women, and Yūho Asaka’s Cairo speech, where she proclaimed that the state was robbing disabled people of their right to have children. In 1996, the law was finally amended to acknowledge that disabled people could also reproduce, but the developments in reproductive technology and its commodification have seen the killing of disabled children become a relatively casual undertaking for most couples. In time, it will doubtless become even cheaper, even less of an event. Given that, it wouldn’t matter if a disabled person tried to get pregnant specifically to have an abortion, right? Wouldn’t that finally balance the scales?
Another topic about which the narrator (and the author) is passionate, is ableism in the literary world, even in the very act of reading, where for her the very act of reading a physical book is literally suffocating:
Holding in both hands an open book three or four centimetres in thickness took a greater toll on my back than any other activity. Being able to see; being able to hold a book; being able to turn its pages; being able to maintain a reading posture; being able to go to a bookshop to buy a book?–? I loathed the exclusionary machismo of book culture that demanded that its participants meet these five criteria of able- bodiedness. I loathed, too, the ignorant arrogance of all those self-professed book-lovers so oblivious to their privilege.
[...]
Here was I, feeling my spine being crushed a little more with every book that I read, while all those e- book- hating able- bodied people who went on and on about how they loved the smell of physical books, or the feel of the turning pages beneath their fingers, persisted in their state of happy oblivion.
[...]
The publishing industry is rife with ableist machismo. The world of sports, which all those literary types who play up their physical weakness display so much vitriol for, has in fact done far better at affording a space in its corner for those with?disabilities.
Which makes for an interesting contrast with the also Booker longlisted whose antiquarian book dealer narrator won't buy a book until she's physically held it in her hands:
I very quickly developed a certain instinct for the books, a feel for the paper, an eye for the quality of the printing, for a well-crafted binding. I don’t know what it is, but it’s almost physical, like an inchworm testing whether a leaf is worth creeping across, or a bird listening to insects moving in the bark of a tree. It might be a detail: the sound when you flick through the pages, the feel of the lettering, the depth of the imprint, the saturation of the colors in an illustration, the precision of the details in a plate, the hues of the edges.
This is not a book for the faint-hearted. Many of us will be, rightly, skewered in our 'happy oblivion' to our able-bodied privilege; the narrator describes the mechanical processes and struggles simply to stay alive matter-of-factly but unsparingly, such as the constant need to suck out phlegm from her respiratory system; and the novel is sexually explicit, the last two coming together in one memorable scene , where she pays her male carer to have sex with her in pursuit of her 'dream' but first insists on performing oral sex on him. She finds the act itself straightforward, as she notes that, have a tracheotomy, she doesn't actually use her mouth or nose to breathe, but then nearly chokes to death on his semen which enters her lungs and hospitalises her.
But it's a book that needs to be read.
I would say a strong International Booker contender, but I wonder if it will be deemed too short (stoppress: fortunately these judges appreciate short books!)
Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC
The judges' take
Who is permitted to feel – and be – desired? Saou Ichikawa’s short, razor-sharp novel – exquisitely distilled into English by Polly Barton – features a protagonist with disabilities who lives in a care home near Tokyo. Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spinal curvature, and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. She is, as the cool kids would say, ‘very online’ – tweeting passionately and posting erotic stories – and her anxieties range from the existential to the sexual. A provocative and powerful indictment of ableism and sexism, this unapologetic, unashamed and unflinching novel defiantly dismantles societal and moral assumptions about disability as it leans into pleasures of the body. In around a hundred pages, Hunchback grips the reader with its raw, fizzing, subversive energy, even as it shakes off shackles — both physical and mental. A book that moved and thrilled us.
February 4, 2025
If you saw this on my tbr for Japanuary, no you didn't. I don't know why I make tbrs. I rarely follow them. I'd say hold me accountable, but my Taurus ass hates that.
I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting from this one, but I think I loved it. Translated Japanese literature is always hit or miss for me, and while the general complaint is that it feels cold, I get it. Or, I get this.
Shaka, and the author, are disabled. You know I love an own voices story. But don't feel bad for Shaka. She has a lot of things going on in that head of hers. The first 9% was wild. The 78% mark was wild. It's sexual. It's weird. I don't want to spoil it. Maybe go in blind. Sometimes that's best.
? Thank you to NetGalley and Hogarth
I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting from this one, but I think I loved it. Translated Japanese literature is always hit or miss for me, and while the general complaint is that it feels cold, I get it. Or, I get this.
Shaka, and the author, are disabled. You know I love an own voices story. But don't feel bad for Shaka. She has a lot of things going on in that head of hers. The first 9% was wild. The 78% mark was wild. It's sexual. It's weird. I don't want to spoil it. Maybe go in blind. Sometimes that's best.
? Thank you to NetGalley and Hogarth
September 26, 2024
Winner of the 2023 Akutagawa Prize for Literature, Hunchback is a semi-autobiographical novella that follows forty-something Shaka Izawa's attempts at "becoming a person." Diagnosed with a form of congenital myotubular myopathy as a child, she now lives in a group facility she inherited from her wealthy parents, where an array of medical equipment and mobility aids and a small rotation of part-time care workers support her everyday existence. When Covid-19 hits, she enrolls herself in yet another distance-learning university degree, desperately clinging to the label of 'student' that marks her membership of a society that both resents disability and pretends that disabled people don't exist.?
But though the physical limits of her body confine her to her studio apartment, Shaka lives a rich inner life – one that spills out into the world under online aliases that tweet indignantly into the void, write armchair reviews of adult venues she herself will never step foot in, and churn out outrageous erotica. And when a male care worker traces these personas back to her, she turns his attempts at extortion into an opportunity to act on her own deepest desires.?
A fierce declaration of agency, Hunchback refuses to subject its protagonist to pity or saintliness, denying able-bodied readers the pleasure of self-satisfying edification at her expense. On the one hand, Shaka narrativises the specific details of her everyday life – the tubes and catheters and trach suction machines, to name only the essentials – forcing the readers to confront the privilege of non-disability and how individuals, industries, and institutions turn a blind, disparaging eye to the needs of people like herself:
Much of the potency of the story owes to the fact that the narrator's characterisation is semi-autobiographical and borrows from the author Saou Ichikawa's own anger. The nuances of the story are similarly nested in the clarity afforded by the author's perspective: in setting the novella in the middle of the pandemic, Ichikawa subtly explores the idea of 'temporary' disabilities in the novella, drawing attention to a continually invisiblised fine line between our categorisations of ability and how easily, instantaneously it can be breached by hidden comorbidities, pregnancy, accidents, and other events. Further, in mentioning figures like the Tomoko Yonezu – in addition, of course, to the specific shape of Shaka's deepest desire – she shows how liberal activism and debates on reproductive justice and morality often gloss over the voices of disabled women.?
However, Hunchback is not all message: it is also an artistic achievement of uncommon wit, and its political potency is often underlined by clever, wry humour. While the narrator calling herself a "monstrous hunchback" may feel like self-deprecation, her "assorted nomenclature" – Shaka, Sākya, and Buddha, all of which interact with her state of "Nirvana"– are reminders that she is, as I note above, shirking off the associations of disability with both wretchedness and with self-sacrificing goodness. The experimental structure of the novella, with Shaka's embodied narrative framed by fictions that objectify and exaggerate the body, further attest to Ichikawa's skill – of writing something that is decisive and declarative, yet vulnerable and open to interpretation; that houses impulses that are both deeply humane and, perhaps by virtue of it, despicable.?
Overall, this is a unique, arresting novella, now available to Anglophone readers in Polly Barton's stunning, skillful English translation.?
But though the physical limits of her body confine her to her studio apartment, Shaka lives a rich inner life – one that spills out into the world under online aliases that tweet indignantly into the void, write armchair reviews of adult venues she herself will never step foot in, and churn out outrageous erotica. And when a male care worker traces these personas back to her, she turns his attempts at extortion into an opportunity to act on her own deepest desires.?
A fierce declaration of agency, Hunchback refuses to subject its protagonist to pity or saintliness, denying able-bodied readers the pleasure of self-satisfying edification at her expense. On the one hand, Shaka narrativises the specific details of her everyday life – the tubes and catheters and trach suction machines, to name only the essentials – forcing the readers to confront the privilege of non-disability and how individuals, industries, and institutions turn a blind, disparaging eye to the needs of people like herself:
Being able to see; being able to hold a book; being able to turn its pages; being able to maintain a reading posture; being able to go to a bookshop to buy a book - I loathed the exclusionary machismo of book culture that demanded that its participants meet these five criteria of able- bodiedness ... Here was I, feeling my spine being crushed a little more with every book that I read, while all those e-book-hating able-bodied people who went on and on about how they loved the smell of physical books, or the feel of the turning pages beneath their fingers, persisted in their state of happy oblivion.On the other hand, she refuses to be lumped with the amorphous, anonymous mass of 'the disabled' who are flattened into statistics about exploitation, violation, and abuse. Indeed, she asserts that she relates to none of the experiences that define 'disability' for the mainstream, and is further aware of her own economic privilege and how it allows her to take advantage of others.?
Much of the potency of the story owes to the fact that the narrator's characterisation is semi-autobiographical and borrows from the author Saou Ichikawa's own anger. The nuances of the story are similarly nested in the clarity afforded by the author's perspective: in setting the novella in the middle of the pandemic, Ichikawa subtly explores the idea of 'temporary' disabilities in the novella, drawing attention to a continually invisiblised fine line between our categorisations of ability and how easily, instantaneously it can be breached by hidden comorbidities, pregnancy, accidents, and other events. Further, in mentioning figures like the Tomoko Yonezu – in addition, of course, to the specific shape of Shaka's deepest desire – she shows how liberal activism and debates on reproductive justice and morality often gloss over the voices of disabled women.?
However, Hunchback is not all message: it is also an artistic achievement of uncommon wit, and its political potency is often underlined by clever, wry humour. While the narrator calling herself a "monstrous hunchback" may feel like self-deprecation, her "assorted nomenclature" – Shaka, Sākya, and Buddha, all of which interact with her state of "Nirvana"– are reminders that she is, as I note above, shirking off the associations of disability with both wretchedness and with self-sacrificing goodness. The experimental structure of the novella, with Shaka's embodied narrative framed by fictions that objectify and exaggerate the body, further attest to Ichikawa's skill – of writing something that is decisive and declarative, yet vulnerable and open to interpretation; that houses impulses that are both deeply humane and, perhaps by virtue of it, despicable.?
Overall, this is a unique, arresting novella, now available to Anglophone readers in Polly Barton's stunning, skillful English translation.?
March 6, 2025
Well done to Ichikawa for the way she gets ger message across: in-your-face so you can't look away. She describes in detail what it means to live with a severe handicap (the main character has myotubular myopathy meaning that underdeveloped muscles prevented heart and lungs from maintaining gooe oxygen saturation), and does not shy away from everything this implies (from something as simple as reading a physical book to the practical difficulties of changing equipment to something as exhausting as sex).
It is a bit extreme and graphic in places and may be a bit too much for some readers. At times I found myself preferring to take a break, but the objective is clear and convincing: more attention is needed for the plight of the disabled. Ichikawa is very critical of Japan, but surely it applies to most countries.
I am in need of an explanation of the ending though...
3,5 and many thanks for the ARC to Penguin Random House.
It is a bit extreme and graphic in places and may be a bit too much for some readers. At times I found myself preferring to take a break, but the objective is clear and convincing: more attention is needed for the plight of the disabled. Ichikawa is very critical of Japan, but surely it applies to most countries.
I am in need of an explanation of the ending though...
3,5 and many thanks for the ARC to Penguin Random House.
February 23, 2025
this is definitely best read in one sitting - the ending made me go WAIT WHAT! this is a wry look at disability and class and reproductive rights, and i don’t think i’ve ever read anything like it. i appreciate what ichikawa was able to do in so few pages, and the way she was able to balance humor with the very real struggles of the narrator. asking a lot of big questions that i’d love to see explored more deeply. i’ve read one other book translated by polly barton and i think she does a great job stylistically!
thank you to hogarth for sending me an ARC of this book!
thank you to hogarth for sending me an ARC of this book!
April 9, 2025
Gahhh, incredible. Strange, provocative, a bit surreal & always thought-provoking. There are so many layers for a book that is less than 100 pages.
Moving, but also off-kilter.
This is now my fave from the International Booker LONGLIST. Too bad it didn’t make the shortlist.
Moving, but also off-kilter.
This is now my fave from the International Booker LONGLIST. Too bad it didn’t make the shortlist.
February 11, 2025
Well I certainly didn't see that end coming.
Shaka Isawa is the main character in Hunchback and narrates her own story. She lives in a care home where her physical needs are met by a team of carers. Shaka has a rare condition that leaves her wheelchair-bound and having to wear a restraining "corset" to prevent her internal organs being crushed by the weight of her body.
A new carer brings new possibilities when he admits that he has read her salacious and often shocking blog but what will his terms be for him to bend to her desires?
Saou Ichikawa is a new voice for me and this novel is clearly based on her own life. It won the Ukatagawa Prize and the Bingukukai Prize for New Writers. It is not hard to see why as she mixes the struggles of Shaka's physical limitations with the disturbing desires she exhibits and writes about in her blog. The book reminds me of the more unusual Japanese literary fiction that I love - Murata, Yuzuki or Mieko Kawakami to name a few. I can't wait to see what she writes next.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Penguin General UK for the advance review copy. Most appreciated.
Shaka Isawa is the main character in Hunchback and narrates her own story. She lives in a care home where her physical needs are met by a team of carers. Shaka has a rare condition that leaves her wheelchair-bound and having to wear a restraining "corset" to prevent her internal organs being crushed by the weight of her body.
A new carer brings new possibilities when he admits that he has read her salacious and often shocking blog but what will his terms be for him to bend to her desires?
Saou Ichikawa is a new voice for me and this novel is clearly based on her own life. It won the Ukatagawa Prize and the Bingukukai Prize for New Writers. It is not hard to see why as she mixes the struggles of Shaka's physical limitations with the disturbing desires she exhibits and writes about in her blog. The book reminds me of the more unusual Japanese literary fiction that I love - Murata, Yuzuki or Mieko Kawakami to name a few. I can't wait to see what she writes next.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Penguin General UK for the advance review copy. Most appreciated.
August 25, 2024
I was intrigued by the reviews for this book but after reading I have no idea what all the hype was about. It’s great to see a book about the experiences of a disabled person out there but this book has no substance at all. There is no real plot and the writing is mediocre at best. Sorry not to have enjoyed it more.
ARC obtained from Penguin General UK via NetGalley.
ARC obtained from Penguin General UK via NetGalley.
November 22, 2024
A confronting novella narrated by a middle aged disabled woman living in a care facility. I’m not sure I liked it… there’s lots of sex (she writes erotic fiction), details about her day to day life (suctioning the mucus from her tracheostomy tube etc) and her thoughts about things she can’t do. There’s also class, the politics of disability and abortion which made it an interesting read.
October 22, 2023
「本を読むたび背中は曲がり肺を溃し喉に孔を穿（うが）ち歩いては头をぶつけ、私の身体は生きるために壊れてきた。」
“Just to read a book, I must twist my spine, crush my neck that already has a hole bored into it, and bang up my head. My body must break in order to live.” p.46
Well, I wasn’t expecting my knowledge of swallowing, tracheostomy tubes, cannulas, speaking valves, and trach suctioning to ever come in handy for understanding anything like that ONE scene toward the end. It may be helpful for people to have a diagram that shows how a trach tube works in order to visualize the issues with speaking, phlegm and . For example, a diagram could show how occluding a trach valve with a finger works to produce adequate airflow for speech through the oral cavity.
Author Ichikawa Saou wrote a novella that she called 30% autobiographical. So it's natural that the protagonist, Shaka, has the same disability as the author. I have to admit, I felt called out when the narrator Shaka complains how a lot of the home helpers don’t know the difference between muscular dystrophy (MD) and myotubular myopathy and how that impacts her daily care. I was also just assuming MD because it’s more common, but MD is degenerative and myotubular myopathy is not. I think it's interesting that her character for the smutty stories she writes is named Mikio (ミキオ) and the disease she has isミオチュブラー?ミオパチー(pronounced miochubyuraa miopachii). Then the name Shaka is similar to the name for Buddha in Japanese and that connection comes into play in the last 5th of the novella. “Nirvana” (涅槃) is mentioned throughout the story.
As Shaka’s muscles for swallowing and breathing are weak, she has to be extra cautious when eating. Clearing phlegm from her throat can be difficult and she has frequent coughing.
「社会性のない咳きは、社会の空気のリズムを乱す。」
My abrasive coughing disrupts the rhythm of society. p. 23.
This reminds me of ableism in the form of someone complaining about an autistic person verbally stemming in a movie theater. Japan focuses so much on creating an idealized barrier-free society, but disabled people in Japan mention how often they don't feel like there's a place for them in public spaces.
You can see some of Ichikawa's wry humor and frustration with ableism in the following sentence:
「せむし（ハンチバック）の怪物の咳きが真っ直ぐな背骨を持つ人々の咳きよりねじくれないでいられるわけもないのに。」
It’s not as if my coughs from my monster-like curved body can be less rebellious than those of a straight-backed person. p. 23-24.
I recently did a presentation on disability and special education in Japan and used this quote from the novella.
「アメリカの大学では础顿础に基づき、电子教科书が普及済みどころか、箱から出して视覚障碍者がすぐ使える仕様の端末（リーダー）でなければ配布物として採用されない。日本では社会に障害者はいないことになっているのでそんなアグレッシブな配虑はない。」
"Due to the ADA, you can’t even try to sell a text at an American university if it isn’t accessible such as text-to-speech readers for the visually impaired. Here in Japan, we’ve just come to act like there’s no disabled people in this country. Because we pretend not to see, we don’t have that level of aggressively inclusive legislation." p.34.
Japan has the Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities as their equivalent of the ADA to provide reasonable accommodations. While the ADA law was signed in 1990 in America, Japan's law wasn't signed until 2013 and then it took until 2016 for it to go into effect. I've seen disability scholars in Japan insist that the law is not strong enough even when amendments are being made (such as extending the law to the private sector). One just has to notice how many special needs students are sequestered away into disability schools to see that "reasonable accommodation" is something Japan is still trying to figure out. Shaka spells out how Japanese society in general is not only unaccommodating to disabled people, but flat out acts like they don't exist, basically an out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality.
「本に苦しむせむし（ハンチバック）の怪物の姿など日本の健常者は想像もしたことがないのだろう。」
"Abled Japanese people have never even imagined a figure like me, a hunchbacked monster, stooped over struggling to read a book." p. 34.
Speaking of the titular epithet, I wonder how the Japanese public reacted to the katakana title “Hunchback.” Was it shocking? Was it confusing? I'm sure there's lots of opinions because the public at large was made aware of this book upon winning the Akutagawa prize. You'd see several copies lined up on display along with a photo of the author at the front of every bookstore in Japan for weeks after the prize was announced. I'd actually never heard the term せむし before reading this book, but after a quick google image search I saw images related to the Hunchback of Notre Dame (ノートルダムのせむし男). Upon looking up the etymology of せむし, it seems to come from the idea of looking like you have a giant bug on your back. Both せむし and ハンチバック are discriminatory words (差別用語) in Japan, but I'm curious to know what different connotations they have. In America, the word "hunchback" is also mainly associated with The Hunchback of Notre Dame and viewed as discriminatory language.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Yonezu Tomoko （米津知子）pop up in this novel on page 44. I even let out a small squeal of joy when I saw her name. She’s a disabled feminist activist from the 1970s that I first read about in Scream from the Shadows by Setsu Shigematsu. In Hunchback, Shaka thinks about Yonezu Tomoko in the clash between feminist activists who wanted reproductive rights and disabled activists who didn’t want abortion of fetuses once the parents found out the child would be disabled. With Yonezu Tomoko at the center, those two groups of activists in the 1970s came to the resolution that it’s the Japanese society to blame since society's what makes abortion of their would-be disabled child the only real option for parents. Thinking along these lines, Shaka muses wouldn’t it be fair if a disabled person wanted to have an abortion?
「だったら、杀すために孕もうとする障害者がいてもいいんじゃない？」 p. 45.
I absolutely loved how this verb for conception 孕む（はらむ）comes up again at the very end of the book. It’s used quite cleverly. The imagery and words Ichikawa Saou use create a lingering effect when you connect it all together. Red spray paint on the Mona Lisa. Red light flashing on the tv to signal brokenness. The clash between the abled and disabled, converging on the Mona Lisa. As time passes, things in museums do not decay, but why must the body? Breaking more and more, just to live each day.
The last 1/5th of the book is weird in a good way. Both the beginning and the end of the book are framed by stories separate, yet intricately linked, from the main narrative about Shaka. I was left with an impression of two sides of the same coin. Who’s to say what is real and what is a dream? Who's to say which is the cause and which is the effect?
P.S. All the above English quotes were translated by me. I'm NOT a translator by any means. I just tried to match the feelings the Japanese quotes gave me. My translation may not technically be correct, so take it with a grain of salt. I hope that this book gets picked up by a Japanese to English translator who has extensive knowledge of disability in Japan and Buddhism. Until then, I think it's good for people to know this book exists and that out of all the Akutagawa prizes that have been going on since 1935, Ichikawa was the first disabled author to receive this award. It's 2023.
March 12, 2025
a novella (or a short story, really) following shaka, a woman in her 40s who was born with a congenital muscle disorder. shaka lives in a care home outside tokyo and the novel is made up of reflections on her days - the e-learning courses she takes, the anonymous erotica she writes online, and her provocative trolling on twitter. it’s quirky and humorous and i really enjoyed the narrator’s voice, especially her frustrations at the difficulties faced by disabled people on a societal level that are often overlooked. it touches on so much: desire, individuality, gender, reproduction, disability, ableism, the duality of mind/body, power (to name a few). i just wish it was a bit longer so we could really dig into those themes properly, the book felt like it ended just as it was really beginning. but still a kooky little book which deserves its place on the international booker longlist.
thank you penguin uk books for the netgalley arc!
thank you penguin uk books for the netgalley arc!
February 26, 2025
Very interesting and disturbing. The writing is pretty simple and there's a strangeness to it. The story for the most part - about a disabled woman confined largely to one room who lives out fantasy lives online - is for the most part fairly mundane and everyday... But it is bookended by an attention-grabbing and explicit beginning and end. An intriguing read for fans of Mieko Kawakami and Sakaya Murata.
April 10, 2025
Hunchback is a highly unique and original story.
Saou Ichikawa has dared to challenge the perceptions of readers by exploring the desire, lust and sexual imagination of Shaka who is wheelchair bound; has a curved spine and requires a ventilator to breathe.
Shaka spends much of her writing explicitly erotic stories for an online site; she also posts challenging / contentious comments on social media.
This leads to one her carers providing her with the opportunity to undertake a sexual act with him
This is a book that opens our minds to consider the sexual desires that frequent people who are not able bodied - reviewed by some as comedic … not so sure ..but this novella certainly has a punch and will divide readers
Saou Ichikawa has dared to challenge the perceptions of readers by exploring the desire, lust and sexual imagination of Shaka who is wheelchair bound; has a curved spine and requires a ventilator to breathe.
Shaka spends much of her writing explicitly erotic stories for an online site; she also posts challenging / contentious comments on social media.
This leads to one her carers providing her with the opportunity to undertake a sexual act with him
This is a book that opens our minds to consider the sexual desires that frequent people who are not able bodied - reviewed by some as comedic … not so sure ..but this novella certainly has a punch and will divide readers
April 7, 2025
I received a copy for review purposes. All opinions are honest and mine alone.
LOTS OF SPOILERS AHEAD
Without a doubt, HUNCHBACK, by Saou Ichikawa, is one of the most unusual books I’ve ever read. Presented as fiction, it’s really biofic on many levels. Both the author and main character share the same disabling condition,(myotubular myopathy), with the same affects: the need for a ventilator, regular suctioning, almost full time care, assistance needed to perform most ADL’s, a power wheelchair to ambulate and so on. She’s able to speak in a limited capacity by covering her trache and can use the bathroom by detaching from the ventilator for short periods of time, (with careful planning), able to take a few steps. It’s possible for her to sit at a desk with specific orientation of tools and use a laptop or read physical books, with great discomfort/pain.
Altho’ Shaka/MC is independently wealthy, thanks to the inheritance from her deceased parents. She receives income from the care home she lives in and owns and earns money writing tawdry sex books and online articles while studying to finish an advanced degree. Being a student makes her “feel normal”.
It’s the other issue that Shaka thinks will “make me feel like a normal woman” that almost had me DNF this very tiny tome.
Shaka has decided that becoming pregnant and then having an abortion is the key to her achieving normalcy as a woman with a disability. There’s no mention of her seeking medical advice as to whether or not she’s physically capable of becoming pregnant or if she can, would it jeopardize her life, give the extremely precarious nature of her health. It appears that she has surmised that having a menstrual cycle equates to being able to become pregnant, sustaining it long enough to recognize the condition and then survive the abortion. Fiction or not, I find this incredibly repugnant on every level.
Shaka goes forward to realize her goal but things don’t go as planned. She definitely needed to do more research with regard to her own health and potential catastrophic consequences. Beyond that, her access to significant funds was a weapon that caused harm for which she had no apparent remorse; wretched character.
There’s a place in the book where Shaka bemoans how difficult it is to manage physical books with her disability. I found it incongruous that she, in turn, produced a book that is very difficult for handicapped people to manage in its physical form. The jacketed hardcover is 5.4” x 7.9”, 112 pgs with a retail over $20. It’s very difficult to hold, keep open and turn pages. $10 on Kindle is going to be a far better option.
How this book won the highest award available in Japan and is currently listed for a variety of awards in literature is beyond me. The idea to feature a significantly disabled person as the main character is good but the execution is sorely lacking in development. As a woman who has at times been bed and/or house bound for years, I’m dumbfounded and offended by Shaka and pray that she is not what readers will conjure up whenever they see a person in a power chair, living with a disabling condition.
The only truly positive aspect of this book is the translation - it’s great?
Read and Reviewed from a GoodReads GiveAway
LOTS OF SPOILERS AHEAD
Without a doubt, HUNCHBACK, by Saou Ichikawa, is one of the most unusual books I’ve ever read. Presented as fiction, it’s really biofic on many levels. Both the author and main character share the same disabling condition,(myotubular myopathy), with the same affects: the need for a ventilator, regular suctioning, almost full time care, assistance needed to perform most ADL’s, a power wheelchair to ambulate and so on. She’s able to speak in a limited capacity by covering her trache and can use the bathroom by detaching from the ventilator for short periods of time, (with careful planning), able to take a few steps. It’s possible for her to sit at a desk with specific orientation of tools and use a laptop or read physical books, with great discomfort/pain.
Altho’ Shaka/MC is independently wealthy, thanks to the inheritance from her deceased parents. She receives income from the care home she lives in and owns and earns money writing tawdry sex books and online articles while studying to finish an advanced degree. Being a student makes her “feel normal”.
It’s the other issue that Shaka thinks will “make me feel like a normal woman” that almost had me DNF this very tiny tome.
Shaka has decided that becoming pregnant and then having an abortion is the key to her achieving normalcy as a woman with a disability. There’s no mention of her seeking medical advice as to whether or not she’s physically capable of becoming pregnant or if she can, would it jeopardize her life, give the extremely precarious nature of her health. It appears that she has surmised that having a menstrual cycle equates to being able to become pregnant, sustaining it long enough to recognize the condition and then survive the abortion. Fiction or not, I find this incredibly repugnant on every level.
Shaka goes forward to realize her goal but things don’t go as planned. She definitely needed to do more research with regard to her own health and potential catastrophic consequences. Beyond that, her access to significant funds was a weapon that caused harm for which she had no apparent remorse; wretched character.
There’s a place in the book where Shaka bemoans how difficult it is to manage physical books with her disability. I found it incongruous that she, in turn, produced a book that is very difficult for handicapped people to manage in its physical form. The jacketed hardcover is 5.4” x 7.9”, 112 pgs with a retail over $20. It’s very difficult to hold, keep open and turn pages. $10 on Kindle is going to be a far better option.
How this book won the highest award available in Japan and is currently listed for a variety of awards in literature is beyond me. The idea to feature a significantly disabled person as the main character is good but the execution is sorely lacking in development. As a woman who has at times been bed and/or house bound for years, I’m dumbfounded and offended by Shaka and pray that she is not what readers will conjure up whenever they see a person in a power chair, living with a disabling condition.
The only truly positive aspect of this book is the translation - it’s great?
Read and Reviewed from a GoodReads GiveAway
March 17, 2025
It did make me feel uncomfortable, as it set out to do. It also made me feel ashamed, because, as Ichikawa's narrator points out, disabled women are not seen in a sexual way. So I appreciate and respect the book as a mirror for the reader to see how they do, unconsciously or subconsciously, have some prejudices.
That said, I found the empty storyline holding these ideas together uninteresting. The writing is poor (or perhaps the translation), with emojis and things like, 'He's self-identifying as a beta male. He's probably an incel. Fuck!' I read it in under two hours, but I didn't particularly enjoy any of it, and was impressed by even less.
That said, I found the empty storyline holding these ideas together uninteresting. The writing is poor (or perhaps the translation), with emojis and things like, 'He's self-identifying as a beta male. He's probably an incel. Fuck!' I read it in under two hours, but I didn't particularly enjoy any of it, and was impressed by even less.
December 22, 2024
Disabled people were not sexual beings - I had assented to the definition that society had created. To do so, I had fed myself a convenient lie.
This is a difficult novella to review. Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa critiques how society has de-sexualized the disabled community, how Japan renders it invisible, and how the literary world has done nothing for disabled people. Ichikawa's main character, Shaka, shares the same disability as the author, so the vivid descriptions of spinal deformities and dealing with the body's mucus (she can't swallow and has related challenges) are as prominent as the sexual content.
We see Shaka beyond the confines of her disability—she's a student, she writes erotica on blogs (which is actually very common in Japan and other parts of Asia; many novels start as blog series), and she runs a social media page where she shares her dark thoughts and desires. Most notably, she has one dream: to get pregnant just so she can have an abortion.
I appreciate the themes and discussions this book brings to the table. However, a certain part grossed me out—let's just say there's an incel character and a situation that isn't quite sextortion but feels eerily close. It's consensual, technically, but it left me questioning: how consensual can something really be when someone is using your private thoughts and disabilities to exploit you? I'm not sure how to process it.
This might be one of the most thought-provoking Akutagawa Prize winners I've ever read.
--
I opened the Twitter account on my iPhone and tweeted:
I want to do the job in swingers' clubs where you get to scatter condoms from the ceiling.
My account had barely any followers, and didn't get any likes. I had to assume that people didn't know how to respond to a more or less bed-bound woman with a serious disability who's constantly tweeting things like:
In another life, l'd like to work as a high-class prostitute.
*ARC received for free. This hasn't impacted my rating.
This is a difficult novella to review. Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa critiques how society has de-sexualized the disabled community, how Japan renders it invisible, and how the literary world has done nothing for disabled people. Ichikawa's main character, Shaka, shares the same disability as the author, so the vivid descriptions of spinal deformities and dealing with the body's mucus (she can't swallow and has related challenges) are as prominent as the sexual content.
We see Shaka beyond the confines of her disability—she's a student, she writes erotica on blogs (which is actually very common in Japan and other parts of Asia; many novels start as blog series), and she runs a social media page where she shares her dark thoughts and desires. Most notably, she has one dream: to get pregnant just so she can have an abortion.
I appreciate the themes and discussions this book brings to the table. However, a certain part grossed me out—let's just say there's an incel character and a situation that isn't quite sextortion but feels eerily close. It's consensual, technically, but it left me questioning: how consensual can something really be when someone is using your private thoughts and disabilities to exploit you? I'm not sure how to process it.
This might be one of the most thought-provoking Akutagawa Prize winners I've ever read.
--
I opened the Twitter account on my iPhone and tweeted:
I want to do the job in swingers' clubs where you get to scatter condoms from the ceiling.
My account had barely any followers, and didn't get any likes. I had to assume that people didn't know how to respond to a more or less bed-bound woman with a serious disability who's constantly tweeting things like:
In another life, l'd like to work as a high-class prostitute.
*ARC received for free. This hasn't impacted my rating.
April 9, 2025
On the 26th of July 2016, a man named Uematsu Satoshi, broke into a care facility near Tokyo and started attacking disabled people, resulting in 19 people being killed and then another 26 being injured. Even though this was one of the deadliest attacks in Japan, the media cover was not as impressive as it should be, raising questions about whether we, as society, consider the life of people with disabilities of lesser value and triggered reactions of disability activists. “Hunchback” by Saou Ichikawa, deals with the sensitive issue of discrimination of disabled people and exposes attitudes that are not only relevant in Japan but the greater world. The book describes in less than 100 pages, the life of a 40 year old woman, named Shaka, who is diagnosed early in her life with a neuromuscular disorder and lives in a facility for people with disabilities that she inherited from her rich parents. Shaka is severely deformed and in need of respiratory support in order to be able to survive, but at the same time she lives a whole different life online tweeting controversial opinions and writing sex stories on an erotica website. At some point one of her carers discovers her hidden identity and the book has an interesting turn related to power dynamics with an ending that left me puzzled and confused (I like an ambiguous ending but this was so open to interpretation that potentially was too much for me). The writing is simple but the sharp prose and the graphic descriptions make the experience shocking and uncomfortable (positively shocking and uncomfortable). This is definitely a book worth reading but I felt that even though the author delivers significant messages I needed a lengthier approach in order to be more engaged.
This is a book about living as a disabled person. About all those times we said I’d rather die than live disabled. The attitude of society towards disabled people and the idea that they don’t contribute to the society as much as those who are healthy. Reproductive rights or the right to abortion in view of disability. Accessibility and disability activism. A story about our perception of health and what is normal. The privilege of being healthy and having a body that society approves of. The difficulty of being bed bound, on respiratory support, having deformities and the gendered experience of medical care. A book about the anonymity of internet. Living behind the screen of a computer and pretending to be someone else while expressing extreme views. It is also a book about power dynamics, money and balance. Irritation and contempt. Getting control of someone else that seems vulnerable. About sex clubs, dating apps, the hook up culture and erotic fiction. The darkness we hide inside. Mutual understanding between the disadvantaged. Clinging to life with all the strength that you have and appreciating the things you are grateful for.
This is a 3.5-4/5 for me!
Why should you read “Hunchback”?
Because you will acknowledge the difficulties of living with a chronic disease and feel that being healthy is a luxury not everyone has.
Because you will get a glimpse of how it is to live a life knowing that you are in constant danger of dying.
Because you will realise that internet and media might give to someone who is silent the opportunity of a new different self that is loud and intense.
Because you will accept that wanting something is normal even if you know you will be never able to get it.
Because you will realise that, unlike what society believes, disabled people have the same desires we all have.
Because you will understand that human beings can always find a means of surviving.
Favourite quotes:
“I’m a 165 cm woman born to tall, attractive parents with platinum credit cards. If I wasn’t disabled, the world would have been my oyster… whatever that means”.
“To live, my body breaks”.
This is a book about living as a disabled person. About all those times we said I’d rather die than live disabled. The attitude of society towards disabled people and the idea that they don’t contribute to the society as much as those who are healthy. Reproductive rights or the right to abortion in view of disability. Accessibility and disability activism. A story about our perception of health and what is normal. The privilege of being healthy and having a body that society approves of. The difficulty of being bed bound, on respiratory support, having deformities and the gendered experience of medical care. A book about the anonymity of internet. Living behind the screen of a computer and pretending to be someone else while expressing extreme views. It is also a book about power dynamics, money and balance. Irritation and contempt. Getting control of someone else that seems vulnerable. About sex clubs, dating apps, the hook up culture and erotic fiction. The darkness we hide inside. Mutual understanding between the disadvantaged. Clinging to life with all the strength that you have and appreciating the things you are grateful for.
This is a 3.5-4/5 for me!
Why should you read “Hunchback”?
Because you will acknowledge the difficulties of living with a chronic disease and feel that being healthy is a luxury not everyone has.
Because you will get a glimpse of how it is to live a life knowing that you are in constant danger of dying.
Because you will realise that internet and media might give to someone who is silent the opportunity of a new different self that is loud and intense.
Because you will accept that wanting something is normal even if you know you will be never able to get it.
Because you will realise that, unlike what society believes, disabled people have the same desires we all have.
Because you will understand that human beings can always find a means of surviving.
Favourite quotes:
“I’m a 165 cm woman born to tall, attractive parents with platinum credit cards. If I wasn’t disabled, the world would have been my oyster… whatever that means”.
“To live, my body breaks”.
July 7, 2024
Read in Mandarin
4.5/5
Vignettes/autofiction. The author doesn’t pull punches describing ableism in Japan. There’s a paragraph about how painful for her spine reading a physics book and it felt like a gut punch ?
That ending though ??? I need everyone to read this so I can discuss what it all means ?
4.5/5
Vignettes/autofiction. The author doesn’t pull punches describing ableism in Japan. There’s a paragraph about how painful for her spine reading a physics book and it felt like a gut punch ?
That ending though ??? I need everyone to read this so I can discuss what it all means ?
March 31, 2025
I had Adina Pintilie’s “Touch Me Not” in mind when I picked this up. Both are designed to make viewers/readers uncomfortable, both dwell in a space between lived experience and fiction, but after seeing a ‘normal woman’ with extreme intimacy issues, deeply alienated from her body alongside a sexually adventurous disabled person, very in touch with his body, Ichikawa’s character casually remarking on sex work and “My ultimate dream is to get pregnant and have an abortion, just like a normal woman” seems deeply distasteful and lacking nuance.
I did attend a viewing of Pintilie’s documentary, which had a Q&A with the ‘characters’ portrayed, including Christian, whom I mentioned above and who has spinal muscular atrophy and insisted that, despite his disability, he does not focus on his body as ‘suffering from’ but as something that can bring him great pleasure. I wish we got more on the idea of intimacy and desire, anger and ressentiment, the unfulfillment of living your fantasies online and the power dynamics/transactional nature of Shaka’s relationship with that resentful “beta male”.
Writing and plot-wise, I found this novella unremarkable. The ending was cheap. Sorry!
I recommend watching “Touch Me Not,” but be warned, it’s a tough one to swallow (I had to… I’m still pissed off, so I’ll see myself out now!)
I did attend a viewing of Pintilie’s documentary, which had a Q&A with the ‘characters’ portrayed, including Christian, whom I mentioned above and who has spinal muscular atrophy and insisted that, despite his disability, he does not focus on his body as ‘suffering from’ but as something that can bring him great pleasure. I wish we got more on the idea of intimacy and desire, anger and ressentiment, the unfulfillment of living your fantasies online and the power dynamics/transactional nature of Shaka’s relationship with that resentful “beta male”.
Writing and plot-wise, I found this novella unremarkable. The ending was cheap. Sorry!
I recommend watching “Touch Me Not,” but be warned, it’s a tough one to swallow (I had to… I’m still pissed off, so I’ll see myself out now!)
January 14, 2025
Without further ado, this is a great book, read it.
At first glance, Hunchback is the by now typical slightly weird thin feminist Japanese novel lauded with prizes. And it is that, but also so much more. Although titled Hunchback, the novel follows a disabled woman with significantly more wide-ranging disabilities. Shaka Isawa, the protagonist, was born with a congenital muscle disorder. Now in her early 40s, she requires full-time care, and lives in a small private facility set up by her wealthy parents before their death. Money and class are at the heart of the novel - Shaka completely acknowledges that she would not be able to have the same life and lifestyle without her inheritance. Shaka spends her time writing erotic fiction and sensational sexual expose amateur journalism. She also attends university through distant learning, and is writing a dissertation on critical disability studies.
Modern Japanese fiction often excels at writing everyday routines, describing the functions and experiences of the most mundane things. Ichikawa follows that approach, but due to the disability of the protagonist, her everyday experiences are viscerally different from those of able-bodied people. The prose focuses on embodiment, showing the reader both the complexities of Shaka's physical interactions with the world around her, and her commentary on it. In a particularly memorable passage, she expresses her anger at the ableism of the book community, scorning the obsession with the smell of physical books, and the degree to which the enjoyment of the said smell becomes a symbol of a cultural system of exclusion of people who read differently (in her case, mostly scanned books).
Unlike some Japanese books I've read, there is nothing half-tone, or reserved, about Hunchback. The author and the narrator do not pull any punches, expressing Shaka's anger at the world around her. The narrative manages to be direct and frank without descending into shock value or disability safari. Ichikawa's focus is the sexuality of her protagonist, and a broader discussion of the disabled body as a sexed body. The main conflict of the story revolves around Shaka's attempt to have sex, only to enable her to have an abortion, something she sees as a worthwhile experience. Discussing disability theory and the conflict between some feminist thought and disability advocacy regarding abortion of disabled foetuses, Shaka presents her desire as a disabled person taking control of and flipping this narrative.
I loved the attention to detail and executive mastery of this novel. Nothing can be cut, nothing should be added. Various small detail bring forward different themes, and each of them could be the subject of its own review essay. For example, most of the people working at the facility have some sort of physical health issues which do not constitute disability. Through these characters Ichikawa touches upon the fact that that bodily ability is a spectrum, and that different bodies exist in the (capitalist) world around them differently due to age, health issues or a myriad other reasons. The intensity and complexity of the book's key interpersonal relationship, that of Shaka and a male employee who despises her wealth, has so many different shades to it. One of the interesting issues Ichikawa brings up is the relationship between sex work and any other work, especially when it involves the body. Labour more broadly is a key theme of the novel, ranging from the labour accessible to severely disabled people to the need for other people's labour to support disabled bodies.
I could go on and on. In short, what an interesting and multi-faceted novel.
Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher, for the review copy.
At first glance, Hunchback is the by now typical slightly weird thin feminist Japanese novel lauded with prizes. And it is that, but also so much more. Although titled Hunchback, the novel follows a disabled woman with significantly more wide-ranging disabilities. Shaka Isawa, the protagonist, was born with a congenital muscle disorder. Now in her early 40s, she requires full-time care, and lives in a small private facility set up by her wealthy parents before their death. Money and class are at the heart of the novel - Shaka completely acknowledges that she would not be able to have the same life and lifestyle without her inheritance. Shaka spends her time writing erotic fiction and sensational sexual expose amateur journalism. She also attends university through distant learning, and is writing a dissertation on critical disability studies.
Modern Japanese fiction often excels at writing everyday routines, describing the functions and experiences of the most mundane things. Ichikawa follows that approach, but due to the disability of the protagonist, her everyday experiences are viscerally different from those of able-bodied people. The prose focuses on embodiment, showing the reader both the complexities of Shaka's physical interactions with the world around her, and her commentary on it. In a particularly memorable passage, she expresses her anger at the ableism of the book community, scorning the obsession with the smell of physical books, and the degree to which the enjoyment of the said smell becomes a symbol of a cultural system of exclusion of people who read differently (in her case, mostly scanned books).
Unlike some Japanese books I've read, there is nothing half-tone, or reserved, about Hunchback. The author and the narrator do not pull any punches, expressing Shaka's anger at the world around her. The narrative manages to be direct and frank without descending into shock value or disability safari. Ichikawa's focus is the sexuality of her protagonist, and a broader discussion of the disabled body as a sexed body. The main conflict of the story revolves around Shaka's attempt to have sex, only to enable her to have an abortion, something she sees as a worthwhile experience. Discussing disability theory and the conflict between some feminist thought and disability advocacy regarding abortion of disabled foetuses, Shaka presents her desire as a disabled person taking control of and flipping this narrative.
I loved the attention to detail and executive mastery of this novel. Nothing can be cut, nothing should be added. Various small detail bring forward different themes, and each of them could be the subject of its own review essay. For example, most of the people working at the facility have some sort of physical health issues which do not constitute disability. Through these characters Ichikawa touches upon the fact that that bodily ability is a spectrum, and that different bodies exist in the (capitalist) world around them differently due to age, health issues or a myriad other reasons. The intensity and complexity of the book's key interpersonal relationship, that of Shaka and a male employee who despises her wealth, has so many different shades to it. One of the interesting issues Ichikawa brings up is the relationship between sex work and any other work, especially when it involves the body. Labour more broadly is a key theme of the novel, ranging from the labour accessible to severely disabled people to the need for other people's labour to support disabled bodies.
I could go on and on. In short, what an interesting and multi-faceted novel.
Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher, for the review copy.
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