Leaden weight of expectations

It has its flaws but this novel ought to be read for the inventive manner in which it explores gender, parenthood, and identity.

I think the reason I felt drawn to Emi Yagi’s Diary of a Void was mainly because I’d been asked twice, in the span of a month, if I’m getting any fertility treatment for my childlessness. This annoyed me; these enquiries were from almost strangers, and I wasn’t sure how to tell them that I didn’t want children.

Originally published in Japanese, Diary of a Void is told from the perspective of Ms Shibata, whose life changes quite dramatically after a lie she tells at work: that she’s pregnant. It’s the reason for her lie that fascinated me the most, and made me a tiny bit furious (on her behalf)— she wants to avoid doing all the chores that she has to as the only woman employee in her section. Imagine feeling like the only way out of picking up after your male colleagues was to feign morning sickness.

Unsurprisingly, this works. Not only did she no longer have to tidy up after meetings, but she even manages to get off work earlier than usual. “What seemed of greatest concern to my bosses rather than when I would clock out, was the question of the coffee. Who would make it? Who was going to deal with the cups? Where was the milk?”

Through Shibata’s experiences, we’re shown how a woman is ‘allowed’ to take care of herself, free of guilt, only when she’s carrying a child. As a single woman in Tokyo, not working overtime meant that she actually got time to run her errands, get her hands on vegetables that were not wilted, and still come home to a bit of daylight. “So this is pregnancy. What luxury. What loneliness.”

While I found the book to be slightly meandering, it certainly captures the universal pleasures and complexities of being a woman. And dealing with the endless weight of expectations — of marrying, of giving birth, of looking a particular way, of being responsible. As a reader, I was also curious about how far Shibata will take this lie, and how she’ll manage to pull this off for nearly a year. I even worried for her: what would she eventually do when her colleagues asked to see the baby?

The novel takes a bit of a strange turn when Shibata starts to behave like she’s actually pregnant, even when no one is watching. She joins maternity aerobics, does pregnancy stretches, and talks to her belly. “Little feet kept kicking inside of me. Those sweet little feet.” At which point I was genuinely perplexed — what had I missed?

But just as the novel is centred around her make-believe pregnancy, it’s also about loneliness and connection. It’s impossible not to feel happy for Shibata when she makes friends through her aerobics classes, with other pregnant women. “How long had it been since I’d walked anywhere, even around my own neighbourhood, with other women like this?” After all, we all want to feel like we belong somewhere. And while the protagonist is able to devote more time to herself on the pretext of being pregnant, Yagi does address the challenges of being a mother.

As Hosono, Shibata’s friend and a new mother who struggles to make her baby sleep says of her husband: “All he had to do was ejaculate. After that, my body took care of the rest. I got bigger, I threw up, and sometimes I couldn’t move.” You realise that things aren’t very different for women anywhere around the world, especially when it comes to gender roles. “Why should I act so grateful just because you changed your daughter’s diaper one time?” asks Hosono.

The title is explained in the translator’s note at the start of the book. It’s a reference to a booklet issued by Japan’s Ministry of Health — the Maternal and Child Health Handbook. In this case, the author has replaced ‘mother and child’ with an ‘empty core’, a void.

I didn’t find Diary of a Void to be engrossing, but I did love the plot, and the inventive manner in which the book explored gender, parenthood, and identity — sometimes tender, sometimes surreal. And it reminds you, as Shibata says in the book, that the decision to bring a baby into the world isn’t ever an easy one— “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s been two thousand years, and it’s the same old story, right?”

The author is a Bengaluru-based writer and editor who believes in the power of daily naps. Find her on Instagram @yaminivijayan

Unbound is a monthly column for anyone who likes to take shelter in books, and briefly forget the dreariness of adult life.