Convenience Store Woman

“It is the start of another day, the time when the world wakes up and the cogs of society begin to move. I am one of those cogs, going round and round. I have become a functioning part of the world, rotating in the time of day called morning.”

At the store, Keiko has purpose; for the first time in her life, she feels like she belongs to society and has a role to fill. Without the store, Keiko is lost and feels like she contributes nothing. In the book, being a mere cog is a positive, despite the idea of a cog (one of many) often being negative.

“The time before I was reborn as a convenience store worker is somewhat unclear in my memory. I was born into a normal family and lovingly brought up in a normal suburban residential area. But everyone thought I was a rather strange child.”

Before Keiko took a job at Smile Mart, she felt like the world made no sense. But as a store employee, she feels reborn. Like a person who is baptized in a new religion, Keiko’s world suddenly makes sense as soon as she learns the clear structure and rules of the convenience store; this quote is one of several examples of religious imagery in the novel.

“And so, believing that I had to be cured, I grew into adulthood.”

As a child, Keiko knows she is not normal but only understands normal behavior as being important to other people. Her family is obsessed with the idea of curing her, but she is uncertain of what needs to be cured and what would cure her. Instead, she play-acts the role of a normal person so her family will stop worrying about her supposed illness.

“At last I saw a sign and, relieved, was running toward it when I came across the ground floor of a pure white building converted into what looked like an aquarium.”

The first time Keiko sees Smile Mart, the store is empty, as it is still being built. Here and in other places, she compares the store to an aquarium, a glass structure used to display life from another realm. In a sense, the convenience store does display such life—a world of structure and rules that, unlike the outside world, makes sense to Keiko.

“Once those of us with long hair had tied it back, and all of us had removed watches and any other accessories as instructed, the motley bunch did actually now look like convenience store workers.”

During her training, Keiko watches her fellow coworkers-to-be transform into a homogenous creature of convenience store workers. The convenience store serves as a liminal space, a place where transformations occur.

“Infecting each other like this is how we maintain ourselves as human is what I think.”

Keiko’s personality is made up of her coworkers’ characteristics and mannerisms. To her, this is normal. It’s worth noting that even in describing what she considers “normal” behavior, she describes the behavior as “infecting each other,” implying that there is something abnormal or even sinister about the human experience—something that very much fits with Keiko’s worldview.

“Just as all the water that was in my body last time we met has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up me have changed too.”

Those around Keiko often note how her mannerisms change each time they see her, but she notices subtle changes in them that they themselves do not. Here, she notes that all the water in her body has changed since she saw everyone more than two weeks ago, implying that their bodies have also changed. This focus on cells and water highlights Keiko’s view that the world is constantly changing but that everything gets replaced in such a way that few ever notice.

“The sensation that the world is slowly dying feels good.”

Keiko likes to walk to the convenience store just before her shift when the streets are empty and devoid of living creatures. This makes her imagine the outside world as dead, which gives her pleasure because it is a world that she does not understand. The convenience store is a sterile place of rules, and she seems to think it will outlive the rest of the world as a whole.

“‘This sort of work isn’t suited to men,’ he muttered. ‘After all, things haven’t changed since the Stone Age, have they? Men go hunting and women keep the home and gather fruit and wild herbs while they wait for the men to come back. This type of work is more suited to the way women’s brains are set up.’”

On his first day of work, Shiraha immediately clashes with Keiko and the other convenience store workers. He comments on the morning chants that he is forced to do as being those of a cult before slacking off and making misogynistic excuses. While Keiko’s views on the world are a bit unusual, Shiraha’s are outdated and offensive—and Keiko points this out, making her the “normal” one in their interaction.

“The same items had always been in their places, but they were continually being replaced. Maybe it made sense to say the store never changes.”

Customers occasionally note that nothing ever changes in the convenience store, but Keiko knows this is not true. The staff constantly changes, and every item that is sold is replaced by another identical item. To an outside observer, it would make sense to say nothing changes, but Keiko is keen enough to notice the subtle ways in which every cell in the world is replaced with another cell.

“When something was strange, everyone thought they had the right to come stomping in all over your life to figure out why.”

Keiko notes that people often feel entitled to change the abnormal after her sister tells her that she is being cured, slowly but surely. But people never feel the need to change something that does make sense to them, and so the normal world can only be imposing, never imposed on by others. This is a source of frustration for Keiko, who knows it is easier to simply pretend to be normal and avoid this imposition even though she cannot understand why she should need to change.

“A convenience store is a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated.”

One morning, a troublemaker is in the store, someone who acts like he works there but is being rude to customers. The manager gets rid of him, and the atmosphere changes to its usual sterile self. While Keiko herself will act like this strange customer at the end of the book (albeit in a polite way), she and Shiraha’s relationship disrupts the normalized environment she seeks.

“When you work in a convenience store, people often look down on you for working there. I find this fascinating, and I like to look them in the face when they do this to me. And as I do so I always think: that’s what a human is.”

Keiko notes that others put her down all the time. In this quote, she notes that such condescension can work both ways. She does not think much of humankind, and so she can look someone in the face as they’re putting her down and, essentially, criticize them for being human.

“So that’s why I need to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me.”

At Miho’s barbecue, Keiko watches as the others move away from her to eat their meat, no longer interested in how strange she is. This reminds her that she needs to fit in better so as to avoid being replaced in the world. At the convenience store, she worries about becoming too old to work, and so she feels the need to “cure” herself before the store has no use for her. It is this fear of being expurgated from both worlds that convinces Keiko that living with Shiraha could be beneficial.

“I was beginning to lose track of what “society” actually was. I even had a feeling it was all an illusion.”

Keiko never understands the way in which society functions, and in Shiraha, she finds someone else who is similarly disconnected from society. However, unlike her, he seems certain of what society is and what is wrong with it. She remains unconvinced of his views and simply confused by the world—a state that allows her to remain optimistic and unable to, like he does to her, live as a parasite.

“You eliminate the parts of your life that others find strange—maybe that’s what everyone means when they say they want to “cure” me.”

Shiraha is frustrated by the world and repeatedly frames himself as a victim of it. Keiko tells him that he does not need to be so melodramatic and should do as she does and simply act normal to keep the world off her back. She takes Shiraha in, assuming (incorrectly) that by having one normal aspect in her life (a man), she can continue to live abnormally in another.

“So the manual for life already existed. It was just that it was already ingrained in everyone’s heads, and there wasn’t any need to put it in writing.”

Keiko finds the convenience store liberating because it comes with a manual to follow, so she always knows how to act. In the real world, she is confused because she never knows what to do or why. Upon telling her sister about Shiraha, Keiko seems to understand that everyone but her knows the real world’s unspoken set of rules.

“‘Oh, sorry. It’s the first time I’ve kept an animal at home, so it feels like having a pet, you see.’”

To Keiko, Shiraha is an animal whom she keeps at home and must feed. She calls him a “pet,” which both puts him in his place and reveals what she thinks of human relationships.

“As a convenience store worker, I couldn’t believe they were putting gossip about store workers before a promotion in which chicken skewers that usually sold at 130 yen were to be put on sale at the special price of 110 yen. What on earth had happened to the pair of them?”

Keiko’s relationship with Shiraha shatters her happiness in the convenience store, as she finds out her coworkers are not like her. That is, they are humans who care more about human things than the needs of the store. She is particularly distraught that her own supervisors would prioritize gossip about her life over a promotion that is beneficial to the store, her temple.

“That sound flowed through me like music. Swaying to the sounds etched deep within me of the store performing, of the store operating, I stuffed the food before me into my body so that I would be fit to work again tomorrow.”

After telling Shiraha about her coworkers knowing about their living arrangement, Keiko sits down to eat and hears her chewing as extremely loud because she had recently been in the store. While most people would assume the store’s noises to be far louder and grating, Keiko interprets these noises as “music” and conjures them to reset herself for the next day. Keiko does not realize the damage that has been done; this reprieve is important as it shows she cannot fathom her world having changed forever, as the noises will stop being pleasant in coming days.

“She’s far happier thinking her sister is normal, even if she has a lot of problems, than she is having an abnormal sister for whom everything is fine. For her, normality—however messy—is far more comprehensible.”

When Keiko’s sister finds Shiraha living in the bathroom, she becomes despondent until Shiraha lies that he was being punished for cheating on Keiko. This calms Keiko’s sister, and Keiko realizes that her sister is not supportive of her at all. Her sister would rather she be unhappy within a normal relationship than the way she was before having met Shiraha: happy, but living a life deemed abnormal by society.

“The long-forgotten silence sounded like music I’d never heard before.”

After Keiko reluctantly quits her job, she can longer hear the sounds of the convenience store that used to stay with her even when she wasn’t working. She takes a shower, and the store sounds are replaced by a silence that sounds musical—until it is interrupted by Shiraha. This moment implies that Keiko might have been able to quit her job and replace it with something positive but Shiraha’s presence does not make this new music last. Keiko enters a depression that she only comes out of when she hears the familiar music of the store once again.

“Maybe no genuine store managers existed anywhere anymore. Before me now was a human male, mindlessly hoping that one of the same species was going to breed.”

Throughout the book, Keiko believes that convenience store workers are no longer human once they wear their uniforms—that they all become equal beings committed to the same purpose of serving the store. However, after her relationship with Shiraha is made public, she watches in dismay as the store stops functioning in this way and humans reoccupy the space. Even the nameless Manager #8 becomes a human, a mere man, rather than a person with admirable work habits.