Hiroko Oyamada’s The Factory is a sharp and slight workplace novella. It joins a spate of similar tales about alienation by Japanese authors: Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, Emi Yagi’s Diary of a Void and Mieko Kawakami’s All the Lovers in the Night. First published in 2013, David Boyd – also Kawakami’s translator — ushers The Factory into English.
The story follows three unhappy subjects as they work for a mysterious (but queasily familiar) corporation. The company is everywhere: ‘vans and trucks with its logos can be seen on every street’. Its headquarters are the size of a city. And yet nobody knows what the factory produces. Yoshiko, a recent graduate, shreds paper for 7.5 hours a day. Her brother proofreads nonsensical documents until he falls asleep at his desk. Both work temporary contracts. Furufue, a corporate scientist, is a permanent employee tasked with gathering moss — for fifteen years.
Oyamada’s novella is distinguished by its ecological bent. As well as disaffected workers, the factory is populated by strange beasts which have adapted to their industrial world — like ‘the Washer Lizard,’ which feeds on lint.
As the boundary between worker and factory becomes hazy, the shredder Yoshiko has an ironic realisation: ‘Life has nothing to do with work and work has no real bearing on life.’ In our age of bullshit jobs and environmental devastation, Oyamada questions if this can be true.
Words: Eve Hawksworth
The Factory
Hiroko Oyamada
[Granta]
