45 pages • 1 hour read
Sayaka Murata, Transl. Ginny Tapley TakemoriConvenience Store Woman
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Cells and Regeneration
Throughout Convenience Store Woman, Keiko talks about her cells and those of the store “being replaced” (55). She seems obsessed with the idea that cells in one’s body are constantly being replaced, making people slightly different from what they were the previous day. During a meeting with her friend Miho, Keiko notes that “just as all the water that was in [her] body last time [...] has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up [Keiko] have changed too” (30). She notices subtle changes in people that they themselves don’t. Keiko tells her sister that she noticed her being “more like a grown-up than before,” while her sister states that she has been a grown-up “for some time now” (45). But Keiko can tell her cells changed and that she now has “crow’s feet” and a “more relaxed” manner of speech (45).
Similarly, Keiko notes that the store itself is constantly being replenished, every item sold being “replaced” by “the same items” in “their places” (43). These figurative “cells” of the store seem to regenerate like the cells in Keiko’s body. When Keiko is away from the store, her cells yearn to be with the store’s cells until two weeks have gone by and all of the store’s water “had already run through [her] body” (102). She loses her purpose and sits in silence, unaware of even the time of day. She can only hear the “vibrations speaking directly to [her] cells” once she enters a convenience store again (106).
Keiko’s talk of cells and regeneration suggests that she sees the store as a source of life, while also playing with the theme that the world seemingly doesn’t change when it does. This contrasts with Shiraha’s view that the world has not evolved since the Stone Age as well as the views of most people that the world of the convenience store is a fixed place. Keiko knows it is anything but unchanging.
Meat
Meat appears at several key points in the text. Firstly, Keiko recounts her younger self’s confusion at seeing a dead bird. While other children are upset by the bird, Keiko sees it and thinks it could be grilled as yakitori for her father. She brings the bird to her upset mother, who suggests they bury it. Keiko knows that yakitori is grilled chicken and cannot understand the difference between it and the dead bird; she also doesn’t understand why anyone would be sad about it. Later, at a barbecue, Yukari’s husband criticizes Keiko for still working at a convenience store, and she watches “some of his spittle” land on the very meat that others are about to eat (58). Finally, when Keiko’s coworkers hear about her relationship with Shiraha, Keiko is shocked that her supervisors would rather ask questions about the relationship than focus on a chicken skewer sale.
In all three cases, meat highlights the ways in which Keiko is not like everybody else. She does not eat much meat herself, usually just serving “cooked rice and boiled vegetables” to Shiraha (77). As a child, she cannot understand why humans would consider eating one type of meat but not another. As an adult, she sees the food spit on by Yukari’s husband as inedible (especially for someone who adheres to Smile Mart’s hygiene standards) and the store’s chicken skewer sale as a priority. Keiko often frames humans as animals, even calling Shiraha a “pet” (77). Animals eating each other is confusing to Keiko—and often confuses humans in the so-called normal world too. Thus, the book’s focus on meat highlights Keiko’s view as being not all that unusual while also reminding her of her own supposed abnormality.
The Convenience Store
The most overt symbol in the book is Smile Mart, the convenience store itself. The store is a place of transformation, something like a liminal space. Keiko thinks she was “reborn as a convenience store worker,” and that the space itself transformed (14). It first appeared to her as though part of “another dimension,” resembling an “aquarium” (18). Aquariums are glass boxes that hold creatures from another world (the sea), and this seems to be what the convenience store does for Keiko, as she is sometimes treated like an alien by others.
To Keiko, the store is a place of religious importance, as it provides her with purpose. She feels the store communicate with her, its sounds transforming into “music reverberating” through her body and causing a “stirring” in her “cells” and “skin” (110). When Shiraha describes the workers’ chants as a “religion,” Keiko reiterates that “of course it is” a religion (39). Like a church or temple, the store is both ubiquitous and mysterious. That is, everyone thinks they know what happens in the store, but only followers of the faith can appreciate it for what it is. Keiko’s faith is confusing to the outside world, but the book suggests there is nothing wrong with her devotion as a “disciple to the store” (49). The power of the store is only confusing to those who can’t see the chaos of the real world.
