Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara

Book Review of the 2003 Winner of Japan's Akutagawa Prize

Jun 29, 2009

An insecure Barbie-girl courts danger when she forms a fragile love triangle with her short-tempered punk boyfriend, and a mysterious forked-tongue tattoo artist.

There is an assumption that those who choose to alter their appearance, physically or cosmetically, live in a constant state of regret and dissatisfaction; horrified by the person they see in the mirror. As if the individual sees himself or herself as others do: an oddity; an outcast; a freak.

Hitomi Kanehara's novella Snakes and Earrings (or Hebi ni Piasu) climbs under the skin of a young woman who passionately desires to expose her true self; as an oddity; an outcast; a freak.

Young and undamaged, Lui dreams of transforming herself from the petit bourgeois Barbie-girl living in the bright light of suburbia, into a punk; living in darkness, skin pierced and adorned with tattoos, feared and shunned by a plastic society that judges such behavior as depraved.

Her desire to shock the system is elevated when she meets a tattoo artist named Shiba-san, who bewitches Lui with his forked tongue. Know what a forked tongue is? Lui follows the question with a detailed description of how one goes about developing a tongue split at the tip into two independent darts that act as a two-headed snake.

It starts with a small simple stud in the tongue; and over time the hole in the tongue is gradually widened with larger and larger studs, until there is left only a small snip of skin and muscle at the tip; sometimes finished off with a cauterizing singe.

Lui and Ama: Young Lovers in Skin and Ink

Lui and her boyfriend Ama enjoy a fairly conventional relationship, albeit spiked with a bit of rough sex. A certain sweetness is lyrically symbolized by author Hitomi Kanehara, in her portrayal of Ama, as a soft-faced punk, with a habit of reverting to infantile behavior in the aftermath of love-making with Lui.

An emotional wellspring is delicately filled up in the early pages of Snakes and Earrings; a lovely portrait of young lovers drawn together by a passion for skin and ink; and through what are essentially domestic comforts; only Lui, in the face of such predictability and cliché, foreshadows darker horizons:

All I wanted was to be part of an underground world where the sun doesn't shine, there are no serenades, and the sound of children's laughter is never, ever heard.

Lui's dark desires come crashing to the fore, when out on the town one night, Ama violently and viciously beats an unsavory character who accosts Lui. Lui is both aroused and frightened by her cherub-punk's shocking behavior; going so far as to save two teeth Ama exacts from the victim's mouth.

Lui Finds Herself in Darkness

In one of Lui's early encounters with the mysterious tattoo artist Shiba-san, a fascinating conversation between the two develops around their mutual interest in, and desire for, pleasure through the giving and receiving of pain. Hitomi Kanehara delivers brilliant insight though her characters, a certain sadomasochistic pleasure found in body art and piercing.

Shiba-san, who sparks Lui's desire for a forked tongue, seduces her over the course of tattooing her back; and coaches her in the proper way to develop her forked tongue.

Soon, Lui's guilty conscience over her secret affair with Shiba-san, combined with a shocking discovery that leads her to question who might be the more dangerous of her two lovers, gradually begins to eat away at her; as she spirals into an alcoholic depression; unrecognizable, even to herself.

Lui's emotional breakdown manifests itself in her impatience to acquire a forked tongue; as she sacrifices blood and sanity by rapidly expanding the hole. In a heartbreaking scene, Lui sees in the mirror the frail and skeletal person she has become, and remarks that she looks like a crane fly.

Lui will experience revelatory heartbreak in the final pages of Snakes and Earrings; and the reader, now achingly close to the endearing Lui, will follow her all the way into the darkness she sought, but never emotionally understood; but, when it’s all over, Lui truly finds herself in darkness, literally and figuratively.

Hitomi Kanehara Constructs a Flesh and Blood Character

Through Hitomi Kanehara’s artistry, the reader becomes emotionally invested in the fate of Lui; where initially, one may have been more curious than empathetic; Kanehara skillfully constructs a flesh and blood Lui, familiar and real.

And like the carnival barker standing outside the tent enticing and luring vulnerable spectators to experience things unimaginable; shocking; and beyond belief; so too, the artist, the writer, tempts the willing patron to enter the tent, and experience something that will stir the senses, and capture the imagination; and this is what author Hitomi Kanehara executes perfectly with Snakes and Earrings.

The copyright of the article Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara in Mystery/Crime Fiction is owned by Martin G. Wood. Permission to republish Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.