As I turned the last page of Japanese author Asako Yuzuki’s new novel Hooked, Indian social media was in an uproar over an Instagrammer by the name of Pujarini Pradhan (@lifeofpujaa). 

Based in rural West Bengal, she makes reels on literature and cinema, bringing up her son, wearing make-up, speaking four languages — frequently surprising and startling her close to 8 lakh followers with her feminism, perception and insight. Well, most of them, because some doubt her authenticity, insinuating she is “an industry plant”, wondering how a middle-class woman with heavily accented and grammatically incorrect English could possibly access Ray and Lynch and Premchand.

I have no unique take on Puja but the furore cuts close to one of the primary themes of Yuzuki’s Hooked, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton. In the novel, Eriko Shimura, a high-achieving 30-year-old businesswoman, becomes obsessed with a blog titled ‘The Diary of Hallie B, The World’s Worst Wife’. 

To all appearances, it’s an irrational fascination: Eriko, the only other woman in her large division in a Japanese multinational, has nothing in common with Shoko, the blogger, who revels in cheap food and slipshod laundry. But scratch a little deeper — and is it possible that in Hallie B/ Shoko, Eriko finds a tantalising glimpse of another way of life, removed from the pressures of quarterly targets and perfect performance assessments?

Facade of Japanese society

If Japanese fiction is having a moment in translation, much of the credit must go to a clutch of women writers and their genre-defying work. Butter (2017), Yuzuki’s first work translated into English (also by Barton), was a blockbuster but writers such as Mieko Kawakami, Yoko Agawa, Banana Yoshimoto, Yoko Tawada have been consistently exploring themes of alienation, isolation, sexism, identity and technology from a peculiarly Japanese feminist perspective. Butter didn’t work for me but, with Hooked, Yuzuki lays claim to this very select coterie of brilliance.

That said, it’s difficult to appreciate Hooked (or, indeed, any of the writers mentioned above) without a certain understanding of Japanese society. On a recent visit, we found a stunningly functioning country: public transport is as clean as it is punctual, the food is as beautiful as it is delicious, the people are as courteous as they are efficient. But a little more every day, the façade disguises a deeply entrenched and all-powerful patriarchy that invisibilises women while thriving on their labour, holding them to impossible standards and actively disparaging and discouraging female solidarity.

That is why, when Eriko tracks down Shoko, expecting friendship on the basis of her blogposts, it feels like a transgression. (It’s worth noting that the Japanese original was published in 2015, when personal blogs were still a thing; though social media has changed rapidly since then, intimacy and consequent trust continue to be the currency, as evident in the @lifeofpujaa kerfuffle.) 

Designed to compete

As the two women circle around each other in an ecosystem that will support them in their designated roles but bar any real bonding, Yuzuki draws parallels with the Nile perch, a carnivorous fish that destroyed the native fauna of Lake Victoria on release, and which Eriko is seeking to re-introduce to the Japanese table. Their desperate yet unnatural connection will see their lives and loves — always tenuous, barely treasured — spiral out of control. Who is Eriko, when she’s not the perfect daughter, the perfect employee so venerated by Japanese society? And who is Shoko, if she finds there’s more to life than being a slob?

In a rare moment of lucidity, Eriko cuts to the quick: “Since I joined my company, it’s been ingrained in me by the men there that women are stupid and don’t know how to collaborate. Gradually… I came to believe what they were saying… The reason that women’s competitiveness over minor issues… stops them from getting along even now isn’t through any desire of their own. It’s because society foists all these standards on us. The world we live in is specifically designed to make us compete.”

Dark and disturbing, provocative and intriguing, spiky and uneven (seriously, what is with the unrealised homoerotic thread in both novels?), Hooked looks at fractures and imbalances in picture-perfect Japanese society and is unafraid to hold it to account. And yes, it’s better than Butter.

The reviewer is a Bengaluru-based writer and editor.

Hooked

Asako Yuzuki, trs Polly Barton

HarperCollins

₹699