4 for the Korean version
Convenience Store Human 8
Love Letter to a Convenience Store 196

We all infect each other and pretend to be 'normal humans'
I'm living

In the summer of 2016, an unusual book signing event by a novelist was held at a convenience store in Tokyo, Japan.
The main character of the autograph session is none other than Sayaka Murata, a female writer who has been working part-time at a convenience store for 18 years.
She won the 155th Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary award, in 2016 for her autobiographical novel, "Convenience Store Woman," which is based on her experience working part-time at a convenience store.
This award, unusually, stirred up not only the literary world but also the media and all of Japan.
In addition to the author's unique background, the work captured everyone's attention with its outstanding quality, combining sharp realistic depictions with humorous satire against the backdrop of a convenience store, a space representative of modern times.

"Convenience Store Human" is a work that poses the question of "how to distinguish and define the boundary between normal and abnormal."
As we go through life, we encounter numerous standards for becoming a "normal human," such as things we must achieve at a certain age, such as getting a job, getting married, and then having children, raising children, and buying our own home.
To fit into that standard, we imitate each other, sometimes lie, and live as if we were 'normal humans', following the manual the world demands.
If you don't do that, you will have to endure the gossip, finger pointing, criticism, and ostracism of others.


“I was born to work at a convenience store.
“Only then could I become a part of the world.”

The protagonist of this novel, Keiko Furukura, is also not free from the demands of this world.
Born into an ordinary family and experiencing various things during her childhood, Geiko realized that she was somewhat of a strange child. When she started working at a convenience store in her first year of college, she experienced the moment when she became a normal 'part of the world' for the first time.
She has been working part-time at the same convenience store for 18 years now, and feels as if the 'sound of the convenience store' is engraved in her, and even in her dreams, she taps the convenience store cash register.
Geiko feels like a part of the convenience store, and finds comfort and identity in following the store's perfect manual.
However, even she, who had been living as a 'normal person' using the convenience store as an excuse, found it difficult to live as a 'convenience store worker' as she turned 36.
People who suspected her of being 'abnormal' because she had never dated, married, or had a decent job no longer used excuses such as chronic illness or family circumstances.
When a man named 'Siraha' appears in front of her, her daily life, which was like a neatly arranged convenience store shelf, begins to become chaotic.


“Hide me from everyone who knows me.” - Shiraha
“I want to erase the parts of my life that everyone finds strange.” - Geiko

Shiraha is a 35-year-old college dropout who is a total idiot who always blames the world when he opens his mouth.
Even the convenience store part-time job she started for 'marriage activities' was so incompetent that she was fired after just a few weeks.
Shiraha, who was stalking another woman near a convenience store that was shut down, runs into a geiko and starts hurling abuse at her, saying, "You're a bottom-class person working part-time at a convenience store at your age," without even knowing what she's doing.
But the two, who seem strangely similar, start living together to escape from the rude and meddling people who are not usually human.

In order to hide from those who would easily rape her life simply because she didn't conform to society's standards, Keiko started living with someone else to continue pretending to be a normal human being by working part-time at a convenience store, but life after living together is not easy.
As they constantly strive to become ordinary human beings, people continue to pressure them to conform to the standards of the average human being.
Sayaka Murata humorously portrays this strange cohabitation and the pressures of others, posing questions about the boundaries between normal and abnormal.


No one living in modern society can be free from these questions.
Watching our lives depicted with hyper-realism, as if watched through CCTV, set in the convenience store, the most visited place by modern people outside of their homes, brings a truly 'bittersweet' laugh to our ears.
"Convenience Store Human" makes us reflect on the standards of normal and abnormal, the useful and useless, and the meaning of exclusion, in a world where even the "three-give-up" generation—those who gave up on love, childbirth, and marriage—has become a dying word.