Cherrypicker
Through death to life

In Milena Michiko Flašar‘s new novel, a disorientated young woman finds not only an unusual new job, but also a substitute family.

By Holger Moos

© Verlag Klaus Wagenbach Milena Michiko Flašar was born in St. Pölten in 1980 to a Japanese mother and an Austrian father. Her latest two novels were devoted to figures on the margins of Japanese society. Ich nannte ihn Krawatte (I Called Him Necktie, 2011) addresses the hikikomori phenomenon, which involves people, mainly men, withdrawing into social isolation from the pressure of social expectations and hardly ever venturing outside their home again. Herr Kato spielt Familie (Mr. Kato Plays Family, 2018) is the story of a pensioner who suffers from the retired husband syndrome, widespread in Japan. Having always focused strongly on his profession, Mr. Kato, now retired, is unable to integrate into his family. Then he discovers a business model common in Japan, and rents himself out through the Happy Family agency as a husband, grandfather or CEO.

At the centre of Flašar‘s new novel Oben Erde, unten Himmel (Above Earth, Below Sky) is 25 year-old Suzu, who claims she has no need for other people. She does no need to have fun either, but simply wants her peace and quiet: “It’s so exhausting getting to know people. All those conversations you had to have to find something you have in common … Why bother? Being myself was tiring enough.“

Unhelpful: Hamsters and a dating app

The decor in Suzu‘s apartment is minimalist. The only homely element is Punsuke, her hamster, but even it soon loses interest in Suzu and creeps into its hole when she comes home.

She has a job as a waitress at a famiresu, an American-diner-style family restaurant, and observes the couples and families who come to eat. While they seem happy, she finds them most difficult to please. Family people are “like predators“ as far as providing for their offspring is concerned. Suzu’s conclusion: “I suppose it’s inevitable that living on your own leads to a certain modesty“.

As far as relationships are concerned, Suzu believes the most important thing is not to expect too much from one another. She reveals nothing about herself, and has no interest in other peoples’ secrets. She does use a dating app, however, and meets Kōtarō067, who is drawn by Suzu’s lack of charm: “You’re one in a hundred! The one percent that does not pretend to be something other than what they are “. The pair have sex, but just as a romantic relationship appears to be developing, Kōtarō067 suddenly ghosts her: “Wiped away. Ditched … Reality was a bad dream from which there was no awakening.“

After this painful disappointment, Suzu lives “as if in a trance“. She loses her job, her manager attests to her lack of ”charm“, empathy, and “social assets“. His parting advice: “Go for a job where you have to deal with people as little as possible“.

Trauma cleaner

First ghosted, then fired. With her self-esteem at rock-bottom, Suzu looks for a new job – after all, she has a hamster to feed. Following her ex-boss’s advice, she looks for jobs without any customer contact and responds to a brief job advertisement: “Cleaner for clearance jobs, m/f, full-time “.

To her surprise, she is invited to an interview by a certain Mr. Sakai. Together with another applicant, she gets the job, after Mr. Sakai has poured them a whisky at the interview. They need it too, because this is not your common-or-garden cleaning company. The job calls for tact, sensitivity and discretion, says Mr. Sakai. What is cleaned are the apartments of kodokusha, people who have died alone at home whose death has gone unnoticed for some time. Kodokushi means “lonely death“, no rare phenomenon in Japan.

Suzu becomes a trauma cleaner. Together with Takada, her new colleague, she undergoes the trial by ordeal of cleaning the apartment of the deceased Mr. Ono, who commissioned and paid Mr. Sakai’s company himself before his death, no easy task in view of the vermin, corpse fluid and stench. She is quick to learn what counts – dignified treatment, paying last respects to the person who died a solitary death and putting things in order for the last time. A place of horror and disgust becomes a normal place again. “Remembrance boxes“ are assembled for relatives, containing a handful of objects of symbolic value. Social isolation is only rarely due to an argument. “Often, people lost touch over the years, or it had become difficult to get through to the other person and one stopped trying to get through to them“.

Empathetic, but not feel-good literature

Mr. Sakai becomes a father figure for Suzu. A philosophising boss, he complains about the “society of immature people“ with its excessive red tape: “Too many rules and regulations lead to blind obedience. And the last century taught us what blind obedience made people capable of doing“.

As well as Suzu and Takada, Mr. Sakai has two other staff. The small business becomes a substitute family, a stroke of luck for Suzu and also for Takada, who grew up without a father and is no less lonely than she is. He lives in a manga kissa, an Internet café providing mangas and overnight accommodation. Takada, too, is an outsider. The fact that he and Suzu have the same surname implies their spiritual kinship.

Oben Erde, unten Himmel is a sensitive, worldly-wise and at times humorous novel about the dearth of urban relationships and dealing with death. In spite of its gloomy topics, Flašar is neither pulled down by their weight, nor does she slide into feel-good literature. The title is based on a remark made by Mr. Sakai, who turned everything upside-down after his life took a key turn. Ultimately, what remains is the realisation that death is not just an end; for those left behind, it can also be a beginning – or fulfilled continuation.