Monsters and Rabbits in Tokyo: Fujiko Akiyama’s Novel Now Available

“Monsters and Rabbits in Tokyo”, the Italian debut of Fujiko Akiyama.

Sensual, perverse and sweet at the same time. Mix a Japanese anime, the noir vein of Ryū Murakami, and you will have a Japanese and contemporary version of “The Idiot” by Dostoevsky. The novel explores the themes of individual freedom and the duality of human interiority.

The great success of Japan in contemporary popular culture of these years shows no signs of diminishing. Not only souls And mangabut also literature, designfood culture. On this traind the arrival on the Italian publishing market of a novel destined to make people talk about it is triggered: Monsters and Rabbits in Tokyo by Fujiko Akiyama.

Monsters and Rabbits in Tokyo is a journey into the depths of the mind and the impossibility of clearly distinguishing good from evil, normality and madness. The unprecedented mix of tones of a souls Japanese and the vein black by Murakami (Ryū) is a mix that gives life to a work capable of touching on different themes, as demonstrated by the first impressions of editors and “beta readers” who have read the novel in preview. Here are some hot comments collected by the curators: “It is a book about freedom. A hymn to the courage to be oneself.” “At times disturbing and raw, at times romantic and moving.” “Shizuka the bunny is a character that is not easily forgotten.” “The somewhat strong scenes are not an end in themselves: they render well the contrast between Shizuka’s candor and the monsters of Shinjuku.” “In some scenes there is a very particular attention to certain minimal details of nature that thus take on a symbolic value. Delicate and poetic.”

The novel, released on May 15, is enjoying good sales and critical success. Here is the synopsis that accompanies Akiyama’s book.

Tanaka Shizuka is a teenager like any other. Until one day she decides to become a rabbit. It is with this bizarre decision that the story of Usagi Chan“bunny” in Japanese.

The story begins with events inside a normal high school in Tokyo. However, as time passes, first months and then years, Shizuka will no longer be able to escape from the depths of her complicated mind. Simple madness, rejection of reality or claim of extreme freedom?

Throughout the story we learn of unlikely psychiatric diagnoses and society’s attempt to bring the girl back to acceptable behavior.

Shizuka, the “rebel with bunny ears”, will end up in the hands of unscrupulous individuals from the wealthy Tokyo, a dynamic and shining city, but also full of perversions and crimes invisible beneath the glossy surface.

The dark side of humanity shines through the “monsters” of Shinjuku, rich, cynical and bored people who lead parallel lives. Perhaps it will only be the appearance of a certain Koko, a young Chinese prostitute who drags out her existence in the Kabukichō district, to suggest some way of salvation for our “bunny”. The story thus takes on a fluid form, between black and psychological novel.

Despite everything, Shizuka remains a character of great sweetness, almost fairytale-like, who always moves with a smile in a hellish world. Her conviction that she is morally obliged to “save” others at any cost dominates everything, through an indulgent approach towards everything that is human, even accepting to suffer evil and violence upon herself as a means to seek the good, always and in any case, in other people.

A novel about freedom, about the suffering of living a life that does not belong to us, that delves without hesitation into the darkness and lights of human interiority.

The book is available on the Amazon platform. There is not much information about the author: she lives alternately between Japan and Italy and little else. “Fujiko Akiyama”, in fact, is a stage name.