1. The Aggressive Nonchalance of Youth:
A Critical Analysis of Kanehara Hitomi’s Autofiction
JJ Miller, Asian Studies (Class of 2016)
Research Advisor: Tomoko Hoogenboom

2. Abstract: The burst of the Japanese economic bubble in 1991 stymied not
only Japanese economic progress, but also the hopes and dreams of a
generation raised on the societal promises of the late-Shōwa period. In the
years following the economic collapse, this strangulation of youthful
idealism began to manifest itself in the mindset of young adults across the
nation. The detached sentiments of this disenfranchised group have been
captured in writing by a number of young Japanese authors, but perhaps
the truest representation of this aggressively self-destructive mindset can
be found in the work of Akutagawa Prize-winning author Kanehara
Hitomi. The following critical dissection of Kanehara’s Autofiction (2006)
analyzes the manner in which the novelist’s use of reverse-chronological
narrative structure and thematic extremism served to shed light on the
complicated worldview of Japan’s lost generation.
Kanehara Hitomi was born on August 8, 1983 in Tokyo, Japan. The daughter of a
college literature professor, Kanehara led a relatively uneventful life until dropping out of
high school at the age of 15. Following a period in which she “didn’t write any stories”
(Onishi, 3), she began to write under her father’s guidance. The immediate result of her
early literary ventures was Snakes and Earrings, a semi-autobiographical novel published
in 2003. That same year, Snakes and Earrings went on to win the Akutagawa Prize, “a
Japanese literary prize awarded semiannually for the best work of fiction by a promising
new Japanese writer” (Encyclopedia Britannica, Web). Kanehara became one of the
Akutagawa Prize’s youngest ever recipients, and skyrocketed to the forefront of public
attention. Furthermore, because of the prestige intrinsically linked to the Akutagawa
Prize, Snakes and Earrings was propelled into the sphere of pure literature, or, literature
“for those readers who ‘seriously’ enjoy reading literature and who have the ability to

3. appreciate its ‘literary’ value” (Ellis, 199). As a result, Snakes and Earrings, along with
the rest of Kanehara’s body of work, has been the subject of much critical analysis, both
in Japan and abroad.
In spite of Snakes and Earring’s critical and commercial success, Kanehara’s most
interesting work to date (that has been translated into English) is without a doubt her
2006 novel Autofiction. Much like Snakes and Earrings, Autofiction is a semi-
autobiographical work, presented as a work of fiction. Considering the novel’s
autobiographical backbone, Kanehara’s writing reflects a disturbed youth mindset, one
shared by a large portion of Japanese youth that “represent(s) the first Japanese
generation to have grown up in true affluence” (Mouer, 123), the likes of which were
predicated on the promises of “a culture built around the shared benefits of rapid
economic growth” (Mouer, 117) found in the late-Shōwa period. The burst of the
Japanese economic bubble in 1991 stymied not only Japanese economic progress, but
also the hopes and dreams of this aforementioned generation. In the years following the
economic collapse, this strangulation of youthful idealism began to manifest itself in the
mindset of young adults across the nation. The detached sentiments of this
disenfranchised group have been perfectly captured in writing by a number of young
Japanese authors, but perhaps the truest representation of this aggressively self-
destructive mindset can be found in Autofiction, particularly though Kanehara’s use of
reverse-chronological narrative structure and thematic extremism.
As stated, Autofiction utilizes a reverse-chronological narrative structure,
meaning that successive chapters jump backwards in time. Interestingly enough, the most
chaotic sections of the novel are those that (in regard to the chronology of the novel

4. itself) are the most recent. At the novel’s outset, the protagonist Rin (a successful author
just like Kanehara) is returning to Japan from her honeymoon in Tahiti. In a societal
framework that has traditionally valued job and marriage stability, Rin, for all intents and
purposes, should be perfectly happy with her newfound position in life. However,
Kanehara subverts this traditional mindset by recognizing the societal pressures that have
been built up over time, and the day-to-day expectations of women involving marriage
and employment, and attributing them to a marked deterioration of Rin’s mental state.
This deterioration culminates in Rin’s experiencing a psychotic episode on the plane at
the outset of the novel:
Just the thought he might be getting aroused and getting a hard-on for another
woman makes me curse and pray that the plane will crash before anything can
happen. Now, come on! Crash! Come on, crash, crash now! I pray to myself. But
the plane isn’t falling from the sky and I stamp my feet in frustration. Why isn’t
the world programmed so that it will self-destruct the instant he cheats on me?
That way I won’t have to live in a world in which he’s cheated on me. Oh I want
to die, I want the world in which he cheated on me to be destroyed! (Kanehara,
12)
Considering recent research confirming “the role of the external social role in the
development and persistence of psychotic disorder(s)” (Bebbington, 70), the link between
Rin’s episode and the societal pressures of Heisei period Japan is an easy one to make.
However, what’s truly interesting about Kanehara’s stylistic choices is her use of stream
of consciousness narrative mode to transplant the reader into Rin’s mindset. Through this
mode, the reader is directly confronted with the thoughts and actions of a young woman
who, according to Shōwa era thought, should have her life in order. Because of this
jarring confrontation, all of the chaos and disorder inherent in the lives of young Japanese
begins to grow uncomfortably clear.

5. Conversely, the least chaotic section of Autofiction comes at the novel’s end.
Here, Rin’s thoughts are clear. In fact the novel closes with Rin at her most lucid: “I’ll
make a change in myself, by myself. I know now that I can” (Kanehara, 216). Rin is full
of hope for her future life. What’s most interesting about this subversion of traditional
novelistic construction is the fact that is takes something that, at a glance, seems like a
happy ending and turns it on its head. Because Kanehara has foregrounded Rin’s
damaged mental state, the ending of Autofiction is absolutely tragic. The reader now sees
fully where Rin once was; and, because the reader already knows where the path of Rin’s
life leads, the result is a sense of complete and utter despair. The reader knows there is no
hope of salvation for Rin, no light at the end of the tunnel of her life. Rin’s confident and
self-reliant inner monologue becomes something like a half-remembered dream of the
past, a shattered mirror reflecting a life once full of hope, promise and the idealism of
youth.
As such, the reversal of Autofiction’s narrative construction functions much in the
same manner as the reverse-chronological presentation of events in Gaspar Noe’s 2002
film, Irreversible. “The effect of this narrative provision is that, in watching Irreversible,
the viewer is constantly confronted with the question, ‘what if (the characters) had acted
otherwise’?” (Atkinson). In reading Autofiction, readers are confronted with this exact
question. What if Rin had acted otherwise? What if the people around Rin, her family and
friends, had acted otherwise? Such a question is impossible to answer, but in asking such
a question, the reader begins to doubt the conventions of the social structure in which Rin
(and Kanehara herself) was raised.

6. This questioning of societal structure is exacerbated by Kanehara’s use of
thematic extremism, which no doubt has its roots in her own life experiences. This
extremism stems from an underlying sense of apathy, and exists as a type of reactionary
detachment derived from the collapse of a once prosperous society (the very same society
that drives Rin’s aforementioned mental deterioration), and the resulting reversal of
expectations regarding life and livelihood. The burst of the Japanese economic bubble in
the early 1990’s left millions struggling to grasp some semblance of a life resembling
those of the high growth period. Kanehara mentions this apathetic mindset mid-way
through the novel. Speaking through Rin, Kanehara writes:
A phrase from some recent news programme pops into my mind: ‘Kids these days
are apathetic.’And though I don’t know about kids in general, I know that I
certainly am. (Kanehara, 135)
This sense of apathy manifests itself in the actions of Rin and her associates, mainly in
the form of sexual violence, domestic abuse, and meaningless sex acts. It exists in the
novel as a driving force, a perfect foil of the hedonism that drove works of contemporary
Japanese fiction during the height of the growth period. That said, the function of these
literary devices is quite similar.
An easy parallel regarding the functions of these devices can be drawn between
Autofiction and Almost Transparent Blue, a semi-autobiographical work of fiction by
Kanehara’s spiritual predecessor Murakami Ryū. In Almost Transparent Blue,
“Murakami…(finds) a…subtle means of destroying assumptions” (Snyder, 207) in which
“base sexuality…becomes a means of rendering everyday existence a mere diseased
shadow of itself” (Snyder, 207). In Almost Transparent Blue, Murakami used hedonism

7. to destroy assumptions and bring to light aspects of everyday existence; in Autofiction,
Kanehara does exactly the same thing, albeit through the use of apathy.
As stated, Kanehara similarly destroys assumptions about the current state of
Japanese youth mindset in Autofiction and the result is altogether shocking. Over the
course of the novel, Rin is faced with situations involving rape and domestic abuse and
responds to them with complete dispassion. Seemingly horrifying situations become
everyday occurrences. Rin and her associates display a complete lack of regard for
personal well-being, the culmination of which occurs during a conversation Rin has with
a friend after a party:
I was thinking, ‘Well, I don’t mind if I’m just getting raped’, but then they totally
gang-raped me. It actually felt kinda good, but then they threw me out in a forest
or something. (Kanehara, 100)
In the minds of Rin and her friends, this type of situation is no cause for concern. A
horrifying situation is met only with a resounding sense of boredom. Rin and her friends
have grown accustomed to their fate, accepting it without resistance.
Later in the novel, Rin is held hostage by a boyfriend, named Gato. Confined to
his apartment, Rin is forced to subsist on the meager supplies of Gato’s pantry: cans of
coffee and packs of half-smoked cigarettes. The typical response to such a situation
would be an attempt at escape, but again Rin faces her predicament with complete
detachment, an acceptance of her fate similar to that expressed by her friend post-rape:
When you’re with someone as useless as Gato, it’s easy to be moved by even the
smallest gesture, such as a crappy can of coffee. But I shouldn’t start to think it’s
acceptable or normal to think this way. I shouldn’t allow myself to be fooled. I
know I’m being treated terribly and I tell myself I should take care never to forget
that. I take a sip of the coffee, then put out my cigarette and reply to a text
message a friend just sent me. I don’t know how to put this, but everything in
world seems so dull. (Kanehara, 148)

8. Even though Rin reminds herself that she is being treated poorly, there is no physical
attempt on her part to escape from her situation.
Furthermore, scenes of explicit sex take on new meaning in Autofiction. Unlike
the manner in which is sex presented in the novels of late Shōwa period writers, sex in
Kanehara’s world is not born out of search for fulfillment. In Almost Transparent Blue,
gratuitous sex is presented in an almost celebratory manner. The sex acts in Almost
Transparent Blue are almost always accompanied by outrageous amounts of food, illicit
drugs, and a number of other pleasure-enhancing features. As such, sex renders Almost
Transparent Blue a decidedly existential work. Murakami’s characters are having sex in
an effort to fulfill some inner desire; there is a search for meaning present in his work.
The exact opposite could be said of Kanehara’s presentation of sex in Autofiction. There
is no search for fulfillment. There is simply the desire to feel something, anything.
Kanehara goes so far as to present sex as something detestable:
The truth is I do hate it. What my pussy says is all true and I probably shouldn’t
do it with this guy. Because I don’t want to. Because I really don’t want to…But I
have to. I have to in order to survive. It can’t be helped. (Kanehara, 121)
Again, this is a marked departure from the hedonistic depictions of sex presented by
authors that operated before Kanehara. Furthermore, this shift in ethos toward sexual
activity is rather sobering when viewed in light of Japan’s rapidly aging population. One
cannot help but imagine that this indifferent attitude toward sex is intrinsically related to
Japanese youths’ desire to remain single longer, a desire that, in turn, effectively silences
the voice of the biological drive to produce offspring
Overall, it is abundantly clear that Kanehara Hitomi has presented radical insight
into the mind of the contemporary Japanese youth in Autofiction. Her interesting use of

9. reverse-chronological narrative structure, coupled with shocking application of thematic
extremism, is no accident. As such, Autofiction casts a grim light on the current state of
Japanese youth psyche. In regard to Kanehara’s work, Murakami Ryū once stated that “if
young authors such as these women do not write, there is no way for the older generation
to understand their mindset” (DiNitto, 459). This is an overwhelmingly true sentiment.
However, it is nonetheless important to note that though Autofiction managed to pinpoint
the grievous failings of the society in which Kanehara and her contemporaries were
raised, it also created healthy discussion regarding potential remedies for the apathetic
mindset of contemporary Japanese youth. Hopefully, discussions such as these will lead
to concrete solutions sooner rather than later, so that future generations will not suffer a
similar fate.

10. Works Cited
- Onishi, Norimitsu. "Just 20, She Captures Altered Japan in a Debut Novel." The New
York Times. The New York Times, 26 Mar. 2004. Web. 15 May 2015.
- "Akutagawa Prize | Japanese Literary Prize." Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 15 May 2015.
- Ellis, Toshiko. "Literary Culture." The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese
Culture. By Yoshio Sugimoto. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Print.
- Mouer, Ross. "Work Culture." The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese
Culture. By Yoshio Sugimoto. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Print.
- Kanehara, Hitomi. Autofiction. London: Vintage, 2008. Print.
- Bebbington, Paul. "Unravelling Psychosis: Psychosocial Epidemiology, Mechanism,
And Meaning." Shanghai Archives Of Psychiatry 27.2 (2015): 70-81. Academic
Search Complete. Web. 15 May 2015.
- Atkinson, Paul. "Time, Memory And Movement In Gaspar Noé's
Irreversible." Millennial Cinema: Memory in Global Film. 17-36. New York, NY:
Wallflower, 2011. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 15 May 2015.
- Dinitto, Rachel. "Between Literature And Subculture: Kanehara Hitomi, Media
Commodification And The Desire For Agency In Post-Bubble Japan." Japan
Forum 23.4 (2011): 453-470. Humanities International Complete. Web. 15 May
2015.