The decline of social capital and meaningful relationships has risen steadily. Prior to the pandemic, former United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy described loneliness as an emerging epidemic; in 2018 the United Kingdom appointed a minster for loneliness in order to report, manage, and reduce loneliness within the United Kingdom. With the onslaught of the pandemic in 2020 into 2021/22, loneliness was referred to as the shadow pandemic. While individuals participated or complied with mandates or restrictions and other public health orders such as social distancing and self-isolation. Restaurants, bars, theatres, and cinemas closed. Other retail stores either shuttered their doors or remained open in reduced capacities. People stayed home (where they could) and to use the resilient cry to arms, hunkered down. All the while, loneliness spread. Images, footage, stories, and news of the elderly locked up and isolated in their care homes looking out windows, completely severed from their social networks, supports, and safety nets. Further reviews, audits, reports, and inquiries have been damning. Canada, for example, paraded itself as a stellar success when it came to its response the pandemic, but reports have also damned the nation and its provinces for its complete failure and abuse of seniors and elderly who were confined to long term care facilities. The response to their needs was not only inadequate but fragrantly negligent, resulting in numerous deaths and causalities. The physical and health related effects of loneliness continue to be studied, with researchers warning that the effects of loneliness are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being a chronic alcoholic, and exceeds the health complications related to obesity. Human beings are hard wired biologically to cultivate and participate in intimate activities. The requirement for meaningful social connections is inherently human, but the notion of loneliness has evolved alongside human society, philosophy, political and economic systems, and social structures. For example, one might imagine archaic feudal rural societies as being plagued with loneliness; but this has not been historically proven. To partially quote Karl Marx: "Religion is the opium of people," and certainly during these otherwise feudal dark ages of back braking labour, mundane oppression, and deliberate inequalities, the church became in essence the epicenter of the social life, a place in which to gather and amongst a group take in the word of the lord. Faith in the divine—this otherwise invisible hand—proved to be the tonic and comfort to what would otherwise be described as lonely souls, because despite their physical isolation or remoteness, the notion of God was an ever unseen but constant companion with faith being the tether to this understanding of divine company. Society in turn continued to evolve, and as medicine, science, and new philosophies that rallied against absolute monarchies and the church's complete subjection and monopoly of the world, the individual has been repositioned as the most important being, not the collective that absorbs the individual. Loneliness was no longer solely attributed to trees, roadways, and clouds, people too began to become acquainted with the notion of loneliness. Modernity brought freedom, fueled further by Darwinian applications in socioeconomic principles, and existentialist philosophies have sought to provide the basis for the individual to live their lives emancipated from the church. Yet, loneliness persists with a pestilence proclivity for permeance.
Loneliness has become a somewhat ironic byproduct of global interconnectivity, consumerism, and technological dependence. Ideas, narratives, stories, experiences can be shared across the world. People are connecting and re-connecting with people online. But the harsh glare of a computer screen or a phone screen, does little to pacify or replace the need for meaningful social connections. Everywhere, however, people are transfixed by their phones. Bombarded with images of their friends or relatives or co-workers or some celebrity on some great adventure, while their commuting to their job or standing in a fluorescent lit hellscape making themselves a coffee in the breakroom. Doomscrolling is another term that has come to the forefront, whereby people consume as if on loop nothing but depressing, negative, disheartening news. Continually, research shows that there is a lack of meaningful relationships and partnerships forming amongst individuals, and technology is neither replacement or alternative. The celebrated rat race of the postwar boom years in the 1950's has expedited and cultivated conditions where the modern individual is doomed to be atomized and isolated. People's calendars are full of activities and events, but the continue 'go, go, go,' narrative only masks the condition, providing the superficial understanding that they have meaningful interactions, with one participant of a study recounting their early investments and relishing in the on-the-go culture from morning into the night, filling their days with activities from school to extracurricular sports to then volunteering, only to slowly become increasingly exhausted. Then they realized they had no real support or meaningful social connections. Their phone and contact list were full of polite acquaintances but no enduring friendship. In turn solitude, alienation, loneliness have perhaps become more prevalent literary themes over the past decades, as it becomes an increasingly permanent fixture of the human condition. Collectivist cultures such as Japan before did not report many cases of loneliness, but the rise of globalization and consumerism has inevitably worn away the collectivist cushioning from alienation and loneliness. Shut-ins or what are known as: hikikomori, are becoming a prevalent demographic in Japanese society, where individuals do not leave their homes or have any meaningful real world social connections. Furthermore, Japan's population is declining, with a number of single person households on the rise, and almost half of the population has reported to feeling occasional loneliness on a daily basis. It’s a concerning social trend, and should not be confused with the wistful solitary characters of Murakami Haruki as they despondently stroll through their neighborhoods and tripping into a surreal dreamscape. It’s a palpable and realistic concern deprived of flights of fantasy. It was due to Murakami's praise of Kawakami Mieko that I initially was hesitant of reading her. Recently, however, her work has been translated and published with frequent ease into English language, showcasing to an extent a significant departure from the previously dominant surreal and magical realist narratives produced by Murakami. Similar to Ono Masatsugu, Kawakami Mieko is a writer concerned with more immediate social and realistic concerns, though she is less literary than Ono.
Loneliness is not the central theme or figure of Kawamai Mieko's novel "All the Lovers in the Night," though it is an apparent reality and state of being. The novel describes a modern woman Irie Fuyuko adrift, completely directionless and aimless, whereby the world zips along past her. Fuyuko is an individual who has seemingly no qualities, no interests, and no life. She is an individual who has come to the conclusion and acceptance that her life will not be very exciting or interesting. The novel introduces her as a simple neutral and beige character. A working professional woman—a copy editor/proof reader—whose almost machine like in her job, capable of working through manuscripts notating errors. At the office her productivity is appreciated, though this is her sole activity, never participating in water cooler chat, conversations, or other social activities. The other women in the office immediately view Irie Fuyuko with disdain. She becomes the focal point of the office gossip, taunts, and other passive aggressive attacks. Irie Fuyuko's character foil is the unapologetic, brash, social, aggressive extravert man-eater Ishikawa Hijiri, who recognizes Irie Fuyuko's productivity and encourages her to become a freelancer, whereby she could most certainly make more money and work from home. This is the life of Irie Fuyuko, a completely blank slate of an individual. She attended and graduated from an average nondescript high school, she had no preferential university or postsecondary ambitions and attended one merely because it was recommended to her. Upon graduation she accepted the first job that was offered to her and then stayed well into her early thirties. Her trajectory in life is best described as unambitious, unassuming, and uninspired coasting. It’s a life lacking in agency or direction. Irie Fuyuko is an amorphous being and individual completely afloat and lost within the world, directionless and perhaps even clueless. Her parents are never mentioned. Though its assuming they were typical middle-class individuals. There is little joy or excitement in her life. She's never left Japan and has no aspirations for traveling. She doesn't give her appearance much thought or concern either. Curating further information to assume that her clothing is generic and equally unassuming, lacking in character or colour. Her birthday is late December around Christmas, which unsurprisingly she celebrates the event alone, but in a rare moment exercises a sense of independence and takes a walk at night and observes the city in all its lights and comings and goings, but also notes people. How they wait for each other in restaurants or train stops; how they walk together or eat together. On one of her nightly walks, Irie Fuyuko is confronted by her own reflection in the mirror:
“The image of myself that floated to the surface, tinged with blue against a backdrop of the signs, walls, and windows of the nearby buildings, looked absolutely miserable. Not sad, or tired, but the dictionary definition of a miserable person.”
What follows is Irie Fuyuko's slow decent into self-realization and actualization, if on a more destructive basis. In attempt to participate in actual events or activities outside of work, Fuyuko goes to a community centre which offers a variety of different classes from languages, to culinary/cooking/baking, crocheting/knitting, to courses regarding the sciences. What follows suit is an embarrassing and destructive showcase, but also opens the door for hope and redemption, the opportunity for a meaningful social connection with another individual attending the event, a high school science teacher, Mitsutsuka. What follows is a budding relationship between the two. Their meetings awkward and polite revolve around superficial subjects and science, with flashes of odd admissions from Irie Fuyuko, giving her imperceptible character some defining feature. Her joy of lying in bed as a child and pretending to be a lion for example. Of course, Fuyuko's dissatisfaction with her life continues, but cannot be resolved as she has no interest or understanding of how to facilitate improving it. What follows is a slow train wreck, the continued dive into crisis and introspection and misery. Irie Fuyuko's default state of being has always been unrecognized loneliness, suddenly faced with its reality, Fuyuko is lost within its all-consuming depths. The narrative goes the way it's expected to. The novel loses its drive and steam and concludes as natural as it can, with a sense of irresolution, all the while gaining further understanding. At times Kawamai Mieko writes almost glaringly polemic, employing the brash Ishikawa Hijiri to give voice to her opinions and perspectives on societal expectations and constraints, lacking the required subtly to be considered successful to thwart accusations of posturing to the readers.
Along with Ono Masatsugu, Murata Sayaka, Kawamai Mieko is a representative of a new wave of Japanese literature, one which showcases writers who are moving away from the incorporeality and disengaged hermetic narratives, and instead moving towards narratives that are socially aware and concerned; they do not shrink or shy away from specifically Japanese elements or cultural references. Kawamai Mieko is a writer renowned in her native Japan as being unapologetically feminist, and these social lenses and perspectives are often stitched and sewn into her narratives, providing commentary on the societal expectations of women in Japan. In this fashion, one of Kawakami's claims to her success is both interviewing and criticizing Murakami Haruki over his otherwise two-dimensional female characters in his work, who rely on heavily male oriented perspectives and characters to define them.
"All the Lovers in the Night," is a unique social novel, one with explicit detailing care into the nuances and perspectives of a life completely adrift in a state of anemic alienation. Scenes of passive aggressive office politics are genuine and empathetically relatable, while the descent into misery is a slow burn, and unfortunate to read, often leaving readers wondering at which point their own lives have come to the same epiphanic moment where they realize their own life will not be very exciting. Irie Fuyuko's job as a copy editor is not held out of any enjoyment, satisfaction, or interest in reading or editing. The description of how she works through the manuscripts to Mitsutsuka seemed frightening, where she described the activity with machinist enjoyment, not enjoying what was written, but merely pecking through looking for mistakes and then discarding the work and moving onto the next manuscript like an assembly line. The lack of fulfillment shows a character who has no direction, no interest, no understanding of life. The novels slow vivisection of these social realities and emotions is what makes it a worthy read. Personally, I didn't find Kawamai Mieko's language explicitly lyrical or touching. The prose was clean and starched, which is required in order for it to land its punches and have the necessary impact; though as the aforementioned polemic discussions aside, there were times the novels language slipped into the uncharacteristically quotidian and vernacular. Beyond these initial observations, Kawamai Mieko's novel “All the Lovers in the Night,” is a tonic of a social critique regarding the amorphous apathy of modern life and loneliness as constant companion of the modern individual.
Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M. Mary
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