Izumi Suzuki is a bit of a counter-cultural cult icon in Japan, though I’d never heard of her before reading this book. Born in 1949, she arose in a society itching to break away from American occupation and western influence. This was the era of Yukio Mishima, actor, model, and poet who attempted to overthrow a right-wing, ultra-nationalist overthrow of the government before failing and committing seppuku. The ’60s were a tumultuous time in Japan, as they were in many parts of the world. In her late-teens and early-twenties, Izumi was an actress in “Pink films”, which were cheaply made erotic films.
This era of American occupation, the post-war rebuild, and political turmoil coincided with the growth of science fiction in Japan – which reached its zenith in the 1970s and 80s. This was the so-called “Second Wave” of Japanese science fiction (popularly called “SF”) writers, and Izumi Suzuki was one of the most prominent names in this group – and one of the few women. The Second Wave incorporated New Wave, pre-cyperpunk artistic expression in their stories which, I think, can give them a very modern feel – at least in the case of Izumi Suzuki. She was a prominent creative woman in a genre that was resistant to female voices. She was actively barred from joining the SF Writers Club comprising her male peers. The SF Writers Club legitimized science fiction writing in Japan, and was formed around the premier SF Magazine, found in 1959 by Fukushima Masami – a kind of equivalent to Hugo Greenbeck (of the Hugo Awards) or John W. Campbell (of the John W. Campbell Award).
From what I can gather, it seems that she was known just as much for her personal life as her writing. She had a brief but tumultuous relationship with Kaoru Abe, an avant-garde saxophonist, and they had a daughter together in 1976. Their marriage was the subject of 1992’s Endless Waltz Mayaumi Inaba, and her suicide in 1986 was the central obsession (along with the deaths of Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe, both of whom also died at the age of 36) of the character in “The Unfertilized Egg” by Junko Hasegawa.
Suzuki’s work is just now being translated into English, with this anthology being the first anthologized book published in America (there has since been another anthology and a novel).
The stories presented here were pretty uneven for me, but they all share common themes of lonely women in often dystopian societies. Drug use, population control, and the failure of technology to improve lives are frequent themes in these stories, as well. Stand outs, for me, were the stories “Women and Women” (a matriarchical utopia where men exist only in prisons or secret) and “Forgotten” (about a woman in an unhappy relationship with an alien).
I found Izumi Suzuki fascinating. I even found her stories interesting – but they were a little…uneventful for my tastes. That doesn’t make them bad, though. I think I was just looking for something else.