‘Heaven’ — Mieko Kawakami

Counter Arts Book Club (*content warning: deals with extreme bullying, suicidal ideation and upsetting scenes — read this review and the novel itself only after considering this and your own mental health please*)

“Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens. — Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker,” — Friedrich Nietzsche, 1888, ‘Twilight of the Idols’

“Out of life’s school of war — what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”

Inspiring, full of positive hope for the future, but….is it true?

‘Heaven’(2009) is written by Mieko Kawakami, who also authored ‘Breasts and Eggs’(2019) and ‘All The Lovers In The Night’(2014). All three of Kawakami’s works were translated for the English-speaking readership by Sam Bett and David Boyd.

‘Heaven’ was nominated for the International Booker Prize last year (2022).

Kawakami, from Osaka, is known as both a singer and a writer in Japan. She is hailed as being one of her countries most prominent contemporary writers.

‘We do it for everyone who’s weak everywhere, in the name of actual strength. Everything we take, all of the abuse, we do it to rise above. We do it for the people who know how important it is.’ — Kojima, ‘Heaven’, Mieko Kawakami.

The writing style in this short (around one hundred and sixty page) book, is complicated, confusing. The story is short and yet deeply meaningful; seems simple enough to be a Young Adult (YA) book, yet involves complex, almost Platonic, philosophical discussion about life, difference (being an Outsider), fate/destiny/free will and the reason the main characters are made to suffer so much at the violently bullying hands of their classmates at middle school.

We experience the world via first-person narrative, that of the main protagonist of this novel who is a fourteen year old boy referred to by the name ‘Eyes’, due to a lazy eye which looks off to the side of his head. We also meet Kojima, or ‘Hazmat’, the boy’s female counterpart and only friend, who is similarly bullied and tormented by their classmates.

I have truly struggled with what I want to say in this review. The subject matter is so emotionally difficult to either read or discuss.

And yet. And yet. And yet…

I feel compelled to say that I did not enjoy reading ‘Heaven’.

Yes, in part that was due to the nature of the story — who would truly enjoy reading about the kind of pain and suffering these teenagers are put through? The physical abuse and mental torture endured on a daily basis at a middle-school, seemingly ceaseless and with no hope of any of the others understanding or caring exactly what they are doing, and relenting. I’m also very conscious that this is translated Japanese literature, so I’m aware that some style differences may well be attributable to that fact.

Yet, I just didn’t enjoy the writing.

I’ve read in some reviews the opinion that the novel captures the voice of these fourteen year olds really well — and I can’t agree with that either….but then, I don’t actually know how Japanese teenagers talk with each other! To me, it seems more like we’re reading a form of instructional work, with it’s philosophical discussion inserted in the guise of conversation; written in the aim of bringing to adults an understanding of the kind of suffering life can inflict during one’s schooldays. Suffering which they themselves may have lived through during their teens.

And this is where I really dislike the whole kit and caboodle.

The philosophical point to all of this really does seem to be endurance. That the only light at the end of the tunnel is that soon they will move on to high-school, where everything will be different.

But will it?

Perhaps, as ‘Eyes’ has discovered the possibility of having surgery to fix his lazy eye. Perhaps, if he begins high-school looking like a whole new ’normal’ looking person, the bullies will relent. Or they might simply find something else to torment him about. After all, surely he will attend high-school with the others he was with at middle school. Won’t he? Isn’t he already marked out as victim material?

Or if they did happen to move on, selecting some other unfortunate teen to pull apart, would he then be expected to join in? And if so would he? In order to belong to the group at last?

Surely, there are always going to be the outliers, and those who will bully them.

If our philosophical discussion here, in the novel, is to be believed it is inevitable that that the strong will turn on the weakest and make them suffer for their differences. And this is how we are always told that the worst bullies are made is it not? Hurt people hurt people. So a child who has previously been victimised and cruelly, violently abused — perhaps at home by a father; or at an earlier school before a physical weakness is corrected — has the potential to then want to turn the suffering on someone else. They will crave a taste of that heady, powerful feeling; even more, they crave a release from the feeling of being weak, a victim.

Kojima believes that by refusing to try to change, to do anything about the things she is bullied for (essentially her cleanliness) she can somehow make a point, whilst also maintaining a connection to her father. While I am certainly in no way victim blaming here, it is well within her power to at least wash more. She is almost a martyr of the ascetic tradition, but with a hint of something which looks more like masochism. At one point she says:

“I bet we could make them stop. But we’re not just playing by their rules. This is our will. We let them do this. It’s almost like we chose this.”

Though, is this seeming acceptance (and lack of desire to be clean) a sign of her mental health issues throughout? A lingering depression and apathy about the situation she is in, which ultimately culminates in what we can only imagine to be a breakdown (she is not seen again after the bullying comes to a head — of which I will say no more, to avoid both upsetting detail and giving away too much detail of the plot).

Is her decision to do nothing to try and avoid being singled out her way of acknowledging the second philosophical ‘speech’ of the book?

This second conversation, between our protagonist and Momose, one of the boys in his class; a very cool character, well thought of by the others but not directly involved with the bullying. He is more of an observer figure, yet he doesn’t seem to even remember or understand what the boys have been doing, or acknowledge that this is causing harm. When pushed, he says it has nothing to do with wrong and right and talks about acting on impulse, simply doing whatever you might, in the moment, want to do.

“Nobody does anything because they have the right. They do it because they want to……..if you want us to leave you alone, you’re totally free to want that. But I’m totally free to ignore what you want.”

It is well known that impulse control (in most people) comes with age. Teenage years are often difficult exactly because they still don’t have full impulse control and yet also act upon growing desire for independence and move allegiance from family to peer groups. These can indeed be stressful and even dangerous times, however as we grow most of us begin to settle down and develop that self-control which has us want to act in morally and ethically acceptable ways. All but the most sociopathic among us operate on a more conscious code of acceptable behaviour once grown to adulthood.

The three ways of looking at bullying presented in this novel, give us food for thought and perhaps even new ways of evaluating a situation many of us may even have endured ourselves.

And yet.

Nothing and nobody in this book really seems to condemn the actions of the bullies. Even when the boys cause violent physical harm to their victim by playing football using his head as their ball (after which he suffers through a suicidal phase where the ideation described is extremely realistic.). It is as though we are searching, not for a way to make the victims live with what has happened to them, but for a way of saying “Boys will be boys”, or “Children can be so cruel”— both of which are sentiments I have come to detest. Are we then simply excusing the bullies and accepting that this behaviour (whatever role in the drama we play) is nothing more than a rite of passage? A natural phase of growth?

“Does anything in the world ever happen for a reason? Pretty sure the answer’s no. Yeah, once it’s happened, you can come up with all kinds of explanations that look like they make perfect sense. But everything starts from nothing. Always.”

Kojima does believe that there is a transformative goal to be reached through enduring their suffering and this is probably close to Nietzsche’s philosophical theory of moral existentialism exemplified by the aphorism at the start of this review.

And yet. I don’t really believe that either.

We may learn to grit our teeth and keep moving through adversity, that much is true; but to suffer physical and psychological trauma will both leave scars which affect us well into adult life — and this doesn’t strengthen, it weakens us (take this from one who knows). Regardless of how well we have buried the effects of our trauma, built a life around it, the pain and anguish still exist and will continue to influence us to some degree for the rest of our days. All we can do is learn better ways of coping, of living around it, despite it (with the help of a good trauma-informed psychotherapist if we are lucky). What we can’t ever achieve is the undoing of whatever was done to us; and all the learning and coping uses up valuable energy which we could simply devote to growing and living. In that respect, surely it is undeniable that the kind of traumatic episodes which may not actually kill you, do still sap energy from your years and in fact make you weaker, not stronger.

And this is what makes me so uncomfortable about Kawakami’s ‘Heaven’, there are elements to the story which strongly remind me of the kind of people who insist that bullying in schools is just “kids being kids”, that it is a natural and normal part of growing up, to be endured because in the end it will benefit the victim. It will “toughen them up”. People who believe that the best thing that could happen to the quiet, sensitive child is to be “toughened up”; that protecting them, stopping others from hurting them or doling out punishment if that does happen, is “coddling” the child, are doing them a disservice.

To put it plainly, I don’t believe that, and I will never be persuaded to believe it. Humanity contains a multitude of different types of people and all have their strengths and their benefit to society and to the world. The quiet, sensitive, studious, intense, or just plain different child could develop into an adult person who makes an incredible impact on the world or on human kind. They might become very successful people who do wonderful work outside of the home and/or be marvellous supportive parents, caring partners, loving carers for the ill and/or disabled — and more. Why would we want or need to “toughened up” the sensitive and empathetic individual who would find their calling in a way which might benefit the hospitalised patient or the elderly residents of a nursing home? We should all be valued as we are, adult and child. For my strength could come from exactly that thing which was my weakness, and who would benefit if that had been stamped or beaten out of me?

Finally, to those saying that children need to learn to live with this kind of behaviour from others because this “prepares” them for life in “the real world”, I say that bullying behaviour has as little place in the office space or any other workplace as it does in schools and playgrounds. Here’s an interesting thought: if we help our children learn about what is and isn’t appropriate behaviour; encourage kindness and respect for each other; and instil principles of gentle co-operation and non-violence (of any flavour) in all places where people live and work — then wouldn’t it be lovely to live in a world where these children then grow to be the adults running their cities, countries and companies?

Thank you as ever for reading. If you would like to read some more about our Counter Arts Book Club texts for this year, go here:

Stay safe. Stay well. Keep reading. With love — Sadie