53 pages • 1 hour read
Breasts and Eggs
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Symbols & Motifs
Alienation from the Body
In Breasts and Eggs, Kawakami turns the familiar foreign by having several characters struggle to identify with their own bodies. She returns to the motif of dissociation and alienation from the body as she explores the effects of oppressive social standards on women. Natsu and other female characters feel alienated from their own bodies partially because of the general complexities of existence in a human body, and partially because of the way women’s bodies are perceived by society.
Kawakami often represents this alienation through language that frames the body as strange, uncomfortable, and ugly. Natsu describes Makiko’s thin body, worn from decades of hard work, in such language, comparing her arms to “sticks” and drawing attention to her sunken eyes. Later, in the bathhouse, Makiko and Natsu compare their nipples to black cherries, Oreo cookies, and rubber tires. These cumbersome metaphors stand out from the novel’s thoughtful prose, deliberately calling attention to the way Natsu and Makiko have been socialized to judge their own bodies harshly against an unattainable beauty standard, and to take drastic measures to conform to that standard. Though Natsu is able to resist this pressure, Makiko, whose work at a hostess bar requires her to appear youthful and beautiful, considers breast augmentation surgery she can’t afford.
Another element of this motif is bodies rebelling against their owners. In Breasts, Midoriko laments the changes brought on by puberty, which accelerate her toward a future she didn’t ask for. In Eggs, Natsu characterizes her body as an “empty husk,” externalizing her disappointment in her own asexuality and waning fertility, which are roadblocks in her path to motherhood. Sengawa’s body is betrayed by itself, consumed from within by metastatic lung cancer.
When Natsu is pregnant, her relationship with her body changes. Though she likens the physical changes to being “dressed up as a cartoon version of [herself]” (425), this sense of strangeness doesn’t cause her any distress. In fact, she feels safe and peaceful in her own body for the first time, illustrating that she has developed an improved relationship with her body, separate from what the patriarchy dictates.
The Cabin
To help Natsu understand anti-natalism, Yuriko conjures a metaphor. She describes 10 children sleeping in a cabin, at peace and safe from the dangers of the world. If woken, nine of the children would be grateful, but one would live in agony until the moment of its death. Yuriko compares the act of giving birth to taking this callous gamble on a child’s life.
The cabin metaphor resonates throughout the narrative as Natsu tries to decide whether having a child is immoral. She dreams that she is inside the cabin while someone bangs on the door violently, a manifestation of her guilt and doubt over her decision to bring new life into the world. Natsu also pictures Yuriko asleep inside the cabin, restoring her to the safety that was prematurely taken from her.
Natsu ultimately accepts that having a child is, at least in part, a selfish act. She chooses to go forward with her pregnancy anyway, but the cabin metaphor helps her achieve a nuanced understanding of her decision and accept the scope of the risk she is taking.
Dreams, Visions, and Memories
As someone who lives on the periphery of society, Natsu spends significant time inside her own head. Experiences in the present often trigger memories of her childhood and her relationship with her late mother and grandmother. Through these memories, Natsu conveys more about her upbringing in a low-income, woman-led household, which informs her perspective on money, gender, and relationships as an adult.
Natsu also experiences vivid dreams and hallucinatory visions, which often blend into one another. Through the fluidity of these different states of mind, Kawakami explores how grief warps Natsu’s perception of time, as well as the way her memories help her cope with this grief.
Natsu’s memory interludes are richly detailed, evoking the scents, sounds, and feelings of her childhood in Osaka. She experiences her memories as if they were occurring the present, and often speaks directly to her mother and Komi; for example, in Chapter 5, she begs: “Don’t die. Stay with me, Komi” (105).
Often, Natsu’s memories mingle with her dreams and imagined visions. This effect is exacerbated when she is drunk or ill. Several times, she describes being unable to tell if a memory truly happened, or if she has invented it to fill in gaps. Recalling images of her mother and Komi, Natsu laments that “things [she’d] seen in dreams were tangled up in memories” (105). The overall effect of being suspended in a liminal space between reality and imagination represents how Natsu lives with one foot in the past, unable to let go of the untimely loss of her family.
At the end of the novel, Natsu confronts her memories head-on by returning to her childhood apartment in Osaka. As she stands in front of the door, she imagines that just behind it, she will find “everything the way it used to [be]” (394), including her mother and Komi. But the door to the past is locked. Natsu can’t turn back time or bring back her family. Instead, she chooses to share happy anecdotes with Aizawa, keeping her mother and Komi alive in memory as she moves on with her life.
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