With a background steeped in playwriting and theater Motoya is more than ready to make her presence felt with The Lonesome Bodybuilder, aided by an excellent translation from Asa Yoneda that scrubs the idiosyncratic stiffness that might have otherwise rendered Motoya’s calculating symbolism impenetrable to non-Japanese readers. Remember back when Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen was expected to ride an expected wave of Asian family melodrama, making her the Japanese Amy Tan? That didn’t happen, and after visiting the odd, sometimes psychedelic world of Yukiko Motoya’s imagination it seems the mission to popularize safe, traditional shufu fiction has been stopped dead in its tracks. Imported Japanese fiction tends to revolve around two entirely different genres: surreal and crime novels, both types well represented with freshly translated books by superstars Haruki Murakami ( Killing Commendatore) and Keigo Higashino ( Newcomer).įor reasons we’re left to speculate on, English-reading literati haven’t quite embraced the simple joys of Japanese domesticities – or deviations from them – nearly as enthusiastically yet. High among them is Yukiko Motoya’s The Lonesome Bodybuilder, a collection of 11 short stories by an intriguing polymath whose work has peppered the Japanese literary and theater scenes for nearly two decades, yet hasn’t managed to break into foreign markets as many of her peers have. Whatever else you could say about it, 2018 turned out to be a pretty great year for Japanese fiction, at least for English-reading fans.

The lonesome body builder