mom

Translator's Note

The 19-year-old debut work of Usami Rin, whose "My Love, Burning" rocked the Japanese literary world.
Winner of the 56th Literary Award, youngest winner of the 33rd Mishima Yukio Award
★★★ 2021 Akutagawa Prize Winner ★★★

In my world, the only absolute and beautiful god is my mother.
“I hoped my mother would remain beautiful.”
_From the text

“There are words in the work that only Usami Rin can use, and I want to read more of his work.
Usami Rin is cursed to write.
This is the curse of being a trustworthy 'writer'.”
Sayaka Murata (author of "Convenience Store Human," winner of the 155th Akutagawa Prize)

After winning the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary award, in January 2021, Usami Rin's debut novel, "Mom," which ranked first in Japanese bookstores and set a record of 500,000 copies in cumulative circulation for about six months starting November 24, 2020, has been published by Media Changbi.
"Mother," which also won the Literary Award and the Yukio Mishima Award, is told through the voice of nineteen-year-old "Uchan," and honestly and boldly portrays the earnest and desperate gaze of a daughter looking at her mother, the god who created her own world.
Usagi, who calls herself 'U-chan', has loved her mother so much that she wrote 'Mom' as her future dream since kindergarten.
The mother expressed her love for her younger siblings, Mitgun and Usagi, by calling them "Mom's Enzo (angels)".
At home, Mom liked to use words she made up. When Mom said, "Welcome, come back," Woo-jang and Mit-kun would reply, "I'm back, Mul-yo-mul," showing their affection.
Just like his mother's way of speaking that he gradually stopped using as he grew up, unlike Woo-chan's peaceful memories, reality and all the situations surrounding Woo-chan had suddenly become painful.
Was it because of my father who cheated on me and left home, or was it because of my grandmother who didn't give my mother love since I was born?
Maybe my mother had no choice but to lose herself because she gave birth to me.
Woo-chan, who suffers from guilt and pity every day, is the only one who watches over and embraces his mother until the very end, even as she wields violence against her family, who are like her own body, and eventually breaks down.
Then one day, on the day his mother was hospitalized for surgery, Uchan set out on a pilgrimage to Kumano.
With a reckless wish that I never told anyone about.
This novel is a story about an abnormal mother and her daughter, but on the other hand, it is also a story about a relationship where one cannot properly express one's love for fear of losing it, a relationship where one must endure the pain of the person one loves but wants to run away from because one must accept the pain of the person one loves.
As you gradually get drawn into the story of Woo-chan, who wants to protect his mother, who has many wounds, just as she was before, and ends up saying, "I want to give birth to her," you will be caught up in emotions that run deep until the last page.
"Mother" is a unique novel that faithfully reflects the author's intention of "writing in a style that makes you hear the voice of a girl desperately speaking to you." The story is told in the first person by a character who calls herself "Woo-jang" and is told through a monologue directed at her younger brother, Mit-gun.
In an interview, Usami Rin revealed that in order to get to the deepest point of the emotions she wanted to touch on in this story, she needed to use the format of talking to her younger brother.
The author, who said that it took her a month and a half to finish the novel after returning from a trip to Kumano, said that this work is a story that came to her when she was determined to write it with all her might without leaving any regrets, and that 'mother and daughter' is a theme that is fundamental to her and will remain inseparable from her in the future.

"A perfect match of style and subject matter.
"I have high hopes for the author's future." - Fuminori Nakamura (novelist)
"Human feelings and emotions are expressed in sentences with frightening accuracy.
"That sentence raises questions about human existence itself and pierces the heart countless times." - Sou Machida (novelist, musician)
"When I read 'Mother', I was reminded of 'The Map of 19 Year Olds' by Kenji Nakagami, which Usami Rin likes.
Both works are the cries of a 19-year-old who can never reach this world." - Kenichiro Takahashi (novelist)
"I remembered a day when I cried so much I almost threw up when I was little.
"It's a sentence that lets you feel the taste and smell as they are." - Saori Fujisaki (musician, novelist of "Twins")
"It wrought a cruel memory of unloved love with lukewarm words, squeezing my heart." - Misato Ugaki (freelance announcer)

Nineteen-year-old Uchan lives with his high school-aged younger brother Mitgun, his mother, his grandparents, and his older cousin Akiko.
Shortly after Woo-chan entered elementary school, his father had an affair and ran away from home, and it was Polo, a dog, who came to the family to replace him.
And after Aunt Yuki passed away a few months later, Akiko also moved into this house in Yokohama.
Akiko, who lives with her grandmother but refuses to be by her side, monopolizes her grandmother's affection, and her mother, who has longed for her grandmother's affection since childhood, walks deeper and deeper into the pit of her own making.
She despairs, thinking that she was born as a bonus for her sister, and cries out that she has been abandoned by the husband she believed would love her.

When my mom had an affair with my dad, she replayed it over and over again inside herself, and she ended up digging a deep hole in it, and no matter what she thought, she would get there.
Probably everyone has it.
When you get hurt, you keep drawing on that wound yourself over and over again, making the wound even deeper, creating a ditch that you can never escape from on your own.
And then he puts the record needle in that ditch, pulls out just one song, the music that torments him, and listens to it over and over again, crying for himself.
(Page 36)

And beside that mother is her daughter, Woo-chan, who is listening to her heartbreaking cries.
Even if you make excuses for not being able to go to school and put your mother first, or if you feel so sorry for your mother when she cries in pain that you feel like going crazy, or if you get so angry and upset every time she hurts you that you can't stand it, when you think that there will never be a mother like this in the world, you can barely feel pity for her.
Still, Woo-chan doesn't know how long he can endure this feeling.
The novel begins with Uchan heading out on the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route with a heavy heart.
If there is a god, what would U-chan wish for?
Even in the world of social media where he was finding solace, and even to Mitgun, who was always indifferent to his family, Woo-chan couldn't open up to his mother, so he wondered whether she loved him or hated him.
What kind of scenery will be on Woo-chan's mind as he blurts out that he wants to get pregnant with his mother?
Usami Rin wrote this in her acceptance speech for the 56th Literary Award.
“In order for me to move forward, I had to write about the pitiful world seen through the narrow eyes of ‘Woo-jang.’”
This novel, in which a nineteen-year-old author begins to speak for the first time about the relationship between "mother and daughter," the female body during pregnancy and childbirth, and further, the "love" that a person must receive to live safely, becomes frighteningly intense and intense with each page turn.
This novel, which leaves everyone wishing for Uchan's safety as they turn the last page, is, as one Japanese reader said, "simply amazing from beginning to end in a way I've never seen before."