45 pages • 1 hour read
Convenience Store Woman
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Themes
Normalcy is in the Eye of the Beholder
Throughout Convenience Store Woman, Keiko admits that she is abnormal in the eyes of society, although she does not fully understand what “normal” means. The real world does not come with any kind of manual for how to behave, and Keiko cannot make sense of social conventions without one. Even as a child, Keiko admits that “everyone thought” she “was a rather strange child,” despite being born into a “normal family” and growing up in a “normal suburban residential area” (13). As a child, she cannot understand people grieving a dead bird or why hitting another child over the head with a shovel is not acceptable if it achieves the desired outcome. However, she does understand that her instinctual behavior is frowned upon—so, she grows up trying to “mimic what everyone else was doing” or at least “follow instructions” (17). Keiko grows up thinking she needs to be “cured” of whatever is wrong with her, while also not understanding what is wrong with her.
Where Keiko feels herself is in Smile Mart, a convenience store. It is a space of clear rules and regulations. There, she learns “how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech” during her training (20). This suggests to her that there is nothing abnormal about needing to be taught such things, since they can be learned. Additionally, the convenience store itself is a normal part of life in Japan. The only “abnormal” part of Keiko’s experience is that she continues to work there well into her 30s. However, she is happy with her job and finds purpose in it—so it is normal for her. But to friends and family, this abnormality must be fixed, as they fail to understand the idea of others being perfectly happy living lives unlike their own. Keiko’s friends take “it for granted” that she “must be miserable,” even though she’s not (33). Keiko’s sister even seems to prefer her to be “normal” but have “a lot of problems” than have “an abnormal sister for whom everything is fine” (92). Normalcy is the goal.
Both Keiko and Shiraha (unsympathetic as he is) feel imposed on by the outside world because they cannot or do not conform to it. But in the end, their conformity would only be for the satisfaction of others. To Keiko, it is abnormal to want something she cannot understand. The book suggests that normalcy is in the eye of the beholder and that the purpose of life should be to find one’s own purpose, one’s own path to happiness—conventional or otherwise.
The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
Keiko’s world is one in which everything seems the same—but in which there is actually radical change. An old woman with a walking stick says that the convenience store “never changes, does it” (43). Later, an old woman with a walking stick says, “this place really doesn’t ever change, does it?” (55). It is unclear to Keiko if this is the same woman or not, but in both cases, she notes that there are changes in the store. In the second instance, Shiraha has just been fired, but the old lady does not notice. But even in the first instance, Keiko notes that “the same items had always been in their places,” but that each item was technically different, as all parts of the store “were continually being replaced” (43). Shiraha argues that the world itself has never changed, and that society is “basically the Stone Age with a veneer of contemporary society” (65). While Keiko is willing to agree with some of his points, she also knows that permanence is an illusion in itself. Everything constantly changes.
The same is true of Keiko’s friendships. While Keiko’s friends notice that she has “changed somehow” because she is now using Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara’s mannerisms, they think they themselves are constant (30). They compliment Keiko on her clothes because she now looks more like them, but Keiko herself notes that they are only complimenting the her with “changed” mannerisms. Keiko sees everyone around her changing too: Miho and her friends “wear exactly the same expression and speak the same way,” even eating cookies in the same manner (31). Keiko’s sister agrees that Keiko has changed but disagrees when Keiko points out how she’s changed too. Keiko notes her sister’s “crow’s feet” and “monotone” clothes and wonders if her sister has changed to fit “lots of people like this in her life,” just as her own changes are due to those whom she absorbs (45).
Despite the physical changes in Keiko’s family and friends, their life events (i.e., getting a job, getting married, having children) make them exactly the same. Like the convenience store in which items are replaced with exact copies, so does the normal world produce people who replace each other in role and purpose.
Society’s Ownership of the Female Body
Keiko’s life is dedicated to Smile Mart to such an extent that she only takes care of her body to support the store. She sleeps to ensure she will be well rested for her shifts and keeps her “nails neatly trimmed in order to better work the buttons on the cash register” (34). On Shiraha’s first day, he notes that the store is like a “religion,” and Keiko thinks he has yet to realize that their bodies “existed only in the service of the convenience store” (39). After quitting, she loses her purpose for keeping in shape and sleeping. She cannot even “bring [herself] to swallow” food with no reason she can understand for “taking in nutrition” (104). Keiko does not consider herself the owner of her own body, which she says “belonged to the convenience store” even when at home (99). Thus, her body is not her own until she is “liberated” from servitude to the store, a “freeing” process that leaves her depressed, unhygienic, and no less free (99).
The female body is no more free in the real world, where women are expected to be vessels for babies. Shiraha (who admittedly has extreme views) claims Keiko’s “uterus belongs to the village” (76). Keiko herself believes a normal life requires that she make her “species prosper” (103)—that her body is a mere vessel for babies and belongs to society at large, which would turn her into one of her supposedly normal friends. Even Manager #8, a convenience store worker whose body should belong to the store, transforms into “a human male” once Keiko quits and he can only see her as a vessel for breeding (97). Keiko knows she is supposed to want children but does not even see the purpose (let alone desire to partake in the act) of procreation.
Keiko’s body is not free in any space. Once she starts living with Shiraha, he possesses her physical form. During their first meeting outside of Smile Mart, he shouts that he wanted coffee, and she obediently goes to “the drink bar to pour some coffee” (66). In their shared apartment, she does all the cooking and even uses public showers to give him space in the bathroom. To the misogynistic Shiraha, this makes sense, as all things male are supposed to be dominant. But Keiko was the one who orchestrated their relationship and living situation in the first place—and yet, loses all power. The book argues that society as a whole sees women as bodies to possess.
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