If this book ever became more popular on this site, I'd imagine the rating would tank and the reviews would be choked with mewling and puking about polemics and misandrists and god knows what other instances of fragile masculinity. This is not your Kawabata or your Tanizaki or even your Enchi, but a fictional take on a real historical instance that sacrifices subtlety in order to put forward its critique on its nonfictional origins. Domestic politics, the rights of the patient versus the power of the doctor, Eurocentrism wiping out records of other cultures getting to scientific discoveries first: the bone is yours to pick. The writing also doesn't have many metaphorical flights or long and self-indulgent trends of digressions, so you're hardly going to be distracted from the straightforward plot line of culturally indoctrinated internalized misogyny transforming a woman-loving-woman love story into a nuclear family fueled success story for the benevolently dividing-and-conquering patriarch. If that doesn't sound like necessary reading, run back to your Murakami: either one will do.

This is a story of a girl who married a man because she fell in love with his mother, a boy trained in the fine art of playing one female worshiper off the other for the sake of professional fulfillment, and a paragon of womanhood whose perfect embodiment of Japanese feminine ideals inevitably led to self-destruction. If all that sounds uncomfortable, that's probably cause, instead of all this acting as a backdrop to some male's character development in addition to some girlfriend-in-the-refrigerator action and aesthetically pleasing rape scenes, this is the story front and center. It certainly gets one thinking about history books and their treasure troves of famous names and famous deeds and famous discoveries, as it's not as if all those famous figures gave birth to themselves. The book's nowhere near the level of [b:Medical Apartheid|114192|Medical Apartheid The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present|Harriet A. Washington|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387667004s/114192.jpg|109960], but there's a similar effort to turn the spotlight away from the pristine medication and perfect scalpels and venerable white coats and towards the bleeding and broken bodies disproportionately sacrificed for a disproportionately ladled out remedy. There's also the twist of cultural norms interfering with gendered surgery, which, however initially interesting, is hardly novel when considering how much the centuries-long ban on dissecting female-presenting bodies in West Asia (hint: Europe has no geographical excuse for declaring itself a separate continent) still interferes with identification of incoming heart attacks. Will making an app for that prove that we have truly "progressed" since the early 19th century that shaped this work's setting? The world may never know.

I hardly made this sound appealing, did I. True, if your main goal in reading is for the sake of entertainment or reaffirming the artificial construct of your comfort zones, yes, you'll be sorely disappointed. However, it's not as if this (completely) lacks a happy ending, or (conscientiously) refuses to conform to a standard plot arc of build/climax/resolution, or spends (most if not) all its time harping on backstage stories and historical representation, so there's hope yet.

Don't you think men are incredible? It seems...that an intelligent person like my brother...would have noticed the friction between you and Mother...But throughout he shrewdly pretended he didn't see anything...which resulted in both you and Mother drinking the medicine...Well, isn't it so?...I think this sort of tension among females...is....to the advantage...of...every male. And I doubt that any man would volunteer to meditate in their struggles." She tried to clear her throat. "He would probably be considered weak if he did, and I suspect...he would perish like an over-fertilized mandarin tree."

Your eyes, your throat, your breast, your genitals, your child, your life. Something's gotta give.