I.
Recently, I had a conversation with a library patron that surprised me. We were discussing whether or not we’d eat human meat. How often does this conversation occur at your local book haven? Look, times have changed. People just want to ask a few questions about foodie cannibalism now and then, and the library is here to serve all comers. What surprised me most about this interaction wasn’t the topic, but the certainty of the patron’s position.
“I’d try human meat,” she said.
“Like, in a survival situation?”
“No, no. If it was just an option at some point in my life. I’d try it.”
I’ve consumed kangaroo, alligator, and rattlesnake. I’ve tried Bambi, Thumper, and I suppose I’d eat Flower if I was desperate. Maybe I’m just weak, sentimental, or stupid, but I wouldn’t eat another person. Having grown up in the Alfred Packer state, I’ve thought about this question more often than I’d like to admit. The imaginary context, though, has always been one of extreme conditions, and my line of thought moralistic. Even if you were frozen or shipwreck-dead, dear reader, I’d like to think I’d die with you rather than dine on you.
II.
Sayaka Murata is a Japanese novelist and short-story writer. Three of her books have been translated into English, including her short story collection, Life Ceremony. I’m not sure a book has ever surprised me more. I knew almost nothing about Murata before I began. She is a literary writer enjoyed by other literary writers and I’d gotten some good vibes hearing her name, so I dove into the only title my library had on hand. Even the cover of her book, if not examined closely, has a semi-cozy and relaxing aura.
Murata is not a horror writer. Probably. The title story of her collection, however, is about eating the remains of other people as a funeral rite. A person dies. A person is prepared as a feast. Funeral-goers honor the person by consuming their edible remains, usually as miso hotpot. Look at the cover again, if you didn’t catch it. That’s a human heart on the left side.
The main character, however, is “one of those people who doesn’t really eat human flesh.” Maho, the protagonist, stands in for us. Her struggle with the story’s sanitized, ritualized cannibalism allows Murata to tackle the moral conundrum explicitly. We, too, don’t think eating human flesh is normal or ethical. (Probably.)
Despite the gonzo premise, there’s a simplicity and plainness to Murata’s style.1 The characters live in the modern world. They discuss social media, their jobs, their lunch breaks, their small city apartments. They go out for drinks. Her settings aren’t dystopian. They’re barely speculative. But even when the stories don’t descend into a kind of softcore Black Mirror experiment, preteens describe the taste of blood from their first French kiss. “I wanted to taste more of Yota’s insides… There was a mouth ulcer, a little hole in Yota. I softly licked it with my tongue, taking care not to hurt him.” Such a decorous description of such a feral instinct.
III.
“Life Ceremony” is not pure allegory, but it’s close. In addition to eating the processed meat of the person being buried, life ceremonies (funerals) also include explicit and public lovemaking. Sex on the streets. Sex outside the funeral home. Sex as a casual effort to make more babies. The world is in post birth-rate decline, and the taboo against sex in public has been obliterated. At least for life ceremonies.
The sex tangent, which becomes more important as the story progresses, solidifies Murata’s allegory. Maho, our protagonist, is a social reactionary. She is confused and disgusted by how the world could have changed so much—eating people, sex stains all over the tarmac any time someone keels over. “When I was little,” Maho remembers, “it was forbidden to eat human flesh. I’m certain it was.”
Murata, of course, has chosen taboos we still hold dear. (Probably.) I don’t think it’s just right-wing commentators who believe we shouldn’t routinely eat human meat. They—let’s assume they’re preppers—might even be less against it than most. But the taboo is firm and current. We agree with Maho’s disgust, or at least find it reasonable. The same with sex on the street.
In this sense, Maho is an incredibly gracious portrait of conservative resistance. Her bewilderment as a moral minority, even though she knows being in the minority is a recent phenomenon, is a mirror image of what your proverbial grandad, or maybe your sister or uncle or mother, might say about any number of moral issues. Drinking, piercings, foul language on the radio, and more.
Sex, though, is front and center for the text, and of course front and center in most modern, post-industrial societies. Murata is many things as a writer, but she isn’t coy. Congratulations on being cool with gay marriage, she implies, but we’re past that. How about some cannibalism? How about human sexuality reduced to bestial, public satisfaction? The new mainstream, progressive values are far enough ahead of our moment that we are made into reactionaries alongside Maho.
The story, inevitably, ends with Maho embracing the new funeral rites. She not only consumes one of her closest friends, but helps prepare his meat. He was a gastro snob. He left all kinds of details about how he should be eaten, and she joins his mother and sister as they prepare his various cuts into various meals. There’s no procreative coupling for her right after his funeral, but she does meet a gay man on the beach who, well, offers his semen in a bottle. Which she uses. While walking naked into the ocean. It’s a wild story!
The story’s thesis, again, isn’t surprising or even that interesting, in my opinion: “Instinct doesn’t exist. Morals don’t exist. They were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming.” But the depiction is generous, maybe defiant. Murata basically accepts every argument of every social conservative regarding progressive moral decline and says, “Yes. Fair. But the new horror will be beautiful, too.”
IV.
As a collection, Life Ceremony reduces humanity’s spiritual horizon to the body. A character stops seeing her city as separate buildings or the citizens as separate people. Instead, the buildings start to feel like hosts, like living animals, and the people inside like their organs, no different from how our body encases a coordinating heart and liver and spleen, active on their own but subjugated to a greater mass. People die when they die, for good, but we give them an afterlife by consuming them or (in a different outing) recreating them as furniture and clothing.2
What could be simple satire of eating meat or wearing leather is instead turned in on itself, the grotesque mesmerizing by dint of its extremity. The body is our essence, and yet a submission to its animal individuality precipitates a spiritual transformation. She wants to stuff the sublime into literal bento boxes, the order of modern (sub)urban lives a container for the vast and bizarre and wondrous.3 It’s like a whole new genre being made before your eyes. Call it joyful body horror. Somehow, she succeeds.
I’ll add this caveat once, but assume it adheres throughout: “to Murata’s style in English.” I assume the translation is faithful, but it’s still a translation, etc.
The main character wears her dead father-in-law’s skin as a wedding veil…
One story features a sister who declares she lived in a magical realm in a previous life and subsequently makes only the most bizarre meals for herself. The conflict is that she’s getting married and no one knows how she and her husband will be happy with sharing the cooking. That’s just the setup.