53 pages • 1 hour read
Mieko Kawakami, Transl. Sam Bett, Transl. David BoydBreasts and Eggs
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 2, Chapters 13-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 2: Eggs
Book 2, Chapter 13 Summary: “A Tall Order”
As the new year rolls around, Natsu’s progress on her novel stalls. Sengawa has stopped asking about the book, and Natsu worries that her editor has given up on her. In late January, she attends a symposium hosted by Children of Donors. Natsu decides to leave early but runs into Aizawa on her way out. She gives him a copy of her novel, and they discuss their careers. Natsu learns that Aizawa is an on-call physician in Osaka. He gives Natsu his email address, agreeing to answer her remaining questions about donor conception.
In February, Natsu meets with Sengawa for a drink. She notes that Sengawa’s eyes look empty, and she is suffering from intense coughing fits. When the topic of family comes up, Natsu asks Sengawa if she’s ever considered having children. Sengawa says that she is happy to be child-free. Her life is busy enough without children, and she has seen firsthand how women who juggle careers and families often end up exhausted and burnt out.
Sengawa gets up to use the restroom and doesn’t return for a long time. Natsu eventually follows. She finds Sengawa bent over the sink, her eyes bloodshot. Wordlessly, Sengawa embraces Natsu. Natsu is surprised by how thin and frail her friend has become.
Returning home, Natsu drinks half a bottle of whisky and browses forums where women discuss infertility treatments. She finds herself frustrated that these women, who are married and therefore empowered to seek treatment, are complaining. She wonders, “Who has the right to have a child?” (276). Opening her email, Natsu finds a message from Aizawa inviting her to another seminar in April. In a heavily intoxicated state, Natsu sends back a paragraph in which she distinguishes the desire to have a child from her drive to meet and know her child. She declines the meeting and ends the email by severing contact with Aizawa. As she drifts off to sleep, Natsu dreams of an exchange she had with Komi when she was a little girl. Distraught over the realization that Komi would die before her, she begged Komi to promise to visit her after death.
Days later, Aizawa and Natsu meet in a coffee shop, where Natsu apologizes for her email. Aizawa tells her more about his life. After his father’s death, his mother and grandmother butted heads often; his grandmother expected his mother to stay in Tochigi and care for her in her old age. Aizawa’s mother was driven to misery and exhaustion by the prospect of looking after her mother-in-law.
Aizawa visited his grandmother in Tochigi. When he tried to reason with her, she lashed out, telling him that he was no grandson of hers. She revealed the fact that Aizawa was conceived via donation and essentially disowned him. Shaken, Aizawa confronted his mother about the news. She told him that when she and his father struggled to conceive, everyone blamed her for being barren. Eventually, testing revealed that her husband was infertile. Aizawa’s grandmother was the one who pushed them to go ahead with donor conception.
Aizawa says that in the absence of his biological father, he feels “like [he’s] only half there” (293). He thanks Natsu for her kindness and states that he’s never told anyone else the full story. As the two part ways outside the café, Aizawa tells her that he is dating Yuriko Zen.
Book 2, Chapter 14 Summary: “A Stiff Upper Lip”
The chapter begins with Natsu cataloging what she knows about Yuriko Zen. Yuriko was born in 1980. Her father sexually abused her from childhood. When she was 12, her parents got divorced. She learned that she was born via donor conception at the age of 25, when her non-biological father died of cancer. Aizawa met Yuriko after reading an anonymous interview of hers in the newspaper.
Natsu and Aizawa continue to exchange emails and meet in person. During one such meeting, Aizawa asks her what it means to want a child. Natsu responds that she wants to know her child but can’t explain why. Aizawa tells her about a young patient of his named Noriko, who died of leukemia at 20. Before her death, Noriko froze some of her eggs. After she passed, her mother contemplated using Noriko’s eggs to have “another” Noriko.
As spring comes around, Natsu realizes that she is falling in love with Aizawa. She feels conflicted, knowing that he is seeing Yuriko. In April, she receives a message from a man named Onda, who she contacted the previous year about direct donation. Onda explains that he enjoys helping women who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for donor conception.
Rika and Natsu meet for lunch at Rika’s apartment, where she lives with her daughter, Kura. Discussing motherhood, Rika says that she feels like her whole life led up to Kura’s birth. She doesn’t miss Kura’s father at all and is happy raising her daughter alone. Natsu wonders aloud if “[she’s] really a woman” because of her asexuality (312). Rika agrees that sex is repulsive. She believes that men can never truly understand the pain of womanhood. Hesitantly, Natsu tells Rika she’s considering donor conception. Rika encourages her, stating her belief that children don’t need to be raised in two-parent homes.
Sengawa joins Natsu and Rika, slightly intoxicated. They continue to discuss motherhood, and Natsu is moved by Rika’s descriptions of her deep love for Kura. As Natsu and Sengawa leave, Sengawa cautions Natsu against listening to Rika’s advice. She asks how Natsu can commit to motherhood when she can’t even finish a novel, then urges her not to waste her talent because “great writers, men and women alike, never have kids” (324). Natsu turns and leaves without a word.
On the way home, Natsu gets a call from Makiko. When she reveals her plan to get pregnant, Makiko is dubious, asking if Natsu understands how hard motherhood can be. Natsu snaps back that Makiko doesn’t want her to get pregnant because she relies on Natsu’s extra income, then hangs up. Exhausted and discouraged, Natsu sends a message to Onda.
Book 2, Chapter 15 Summary: “Take It Or Leave It”
Under the pseudonym of Yamada, Natsu meets Onda for tea at a local restaurant. She is struck by his unattractive appearance, which doesn’t match the description on his website. Onda hands her a sheaf of papers with results from his sperm count test, which has unusually high numbers. Onda dominates the conversation, talking about the quality of his semen and how many women he’s impregnated. He suggests that Natsu have direct sexual intercourse with him for the highest chance of conception. Onda speculates that men have a natural drive to impregnate women, to prove the validity of their semen. He tells Natsu about a friend of his who practices “stealthing,” a form of rape whereby a condom is secretly removed during intercourse without consent.
Natsu realizes that Onda is masturbating under the table. She gets up and leaves immediately. On her way back home, she spots Yuriko and instinctively begins following her. After several minutes, Yuriko turns and confronts Natsu, asking if this is about Aizawa.
Yuriko tells Natsu that Aizawa is only with her because she helped him out of a dark place. He had previously enjoyed success as a physician and was engaged to a woman he’d loved for years, but his fiancée ended their engagement when she learned that Aizawa didn’t know his biological father. Aizawa attempted suicide with medicine he’d obtained illegally, leading to his resignation from the hospital.
Amending her previous statement, Yuriko says there is another reason Aizawa is with her; he feels bad for her. She tells Natsu about the extent of her sexual abuse at the hands of her father, detailing how he used to drive her to an abandoned parking lot, where he encouraged other men to assault her.
Yuriko asks why Natsu wants to have a child. She believes that giving birth is an act of violence, bringing another person into the world without their consent. To help Natsu understand, Yuriko asks her to picture a cabin in which 10 children are sleeping peacefully and safely. If awoken, nine of the children will be happy and grateful, but the tenth will live in agony until their final breath. She likens this gamble to the act of conceiving a child. As Natsu sits in silence, Yuriko whispers that nobody should have children.
In July, Natsu falls ill with a high fever that lasts a week. She dreams of herself inside the cabin described by Yuriko; as she watches the children sleep, someone bangs on the door while she begs them to stop. When Natsu’s fever breaks, she’s disconcerted to find no messages from her family or friends. Aizawa calls to check in on her. He tells her that he and Yuriko have broken up and admits that he’s fallen in love with her. Natsu tells him that she feels the same way, but that she can’t be with him. Asserting that their relationship is over, she hangs up. She rips up the poem about having a child.
Book 2, Chapters 13-15 Analysis
In these chapters, Natsu encounters several obstacles in her pursuit of motherhood. One of these is her relationship with Yuriko Zen. Kawakami delves further into Reproductive Rights Versus Anti-Natalism through Yuriko. Born into a dysfunctional family, Yuriko was sexually abused by her father, who allowed her to be exploited by other men. Yuriko wishes that she had never been born. She believes that bringing new life into the world is an inherently selfish and immoral act because it is a gamble taken on someone else’s life. Yuriko’s assertion that no one should have children connects to Midoriko’s sentiment in Breasts. They both see parents who choose to conceive as taking a chance that their child will be miserable or maladjusted.
Natsu also encounters resistance from other women in her solo fertility journey. Sengawa shames her for her desire to have a child, framing motherhood and creative ambition as two forces at odds with one another. Sengawa’s assertion that mothers can’t be great artists is based in misogyny. Makiko also discourages Natsu despite being a single mother herself. Makiko knows firsthand how hard it is to raise a child alone and doesn’t want Natsu to go through the same struggle. These reactions speak to the theme of Defining Womanhood: Gender Roles in Contemporary Japan and highlight how women can never do “right.” No matter how Natsu chooses to live, she will face judgment and criticism, even from other women.
Aizawa’s anecdote about his mother and grandmother is an example of how women perpetuate patriarchal gender roles by policing one another’s behavior. His grandmother believes that his mother has a duty to care for the household, whether she wants to or not. This belief stems from the fact that Aizawa’s grandmother has spent her own life caring for her husband and family members; because she was not given a choice, she is unwilling to let her daughter-in-law off the hook for the same duties. In this way, misogyny is perpetuated generationally by women as well as men.
Rika emerges as the biggest supporter of Natsu’s journey toward motherhood. She is quite happy raising a daughter on her own and sees no reason why Natsu can’t do the same. Rika has dismantled the internalized misogyny that motivates Sengawa’s outburst. She is comfortable saying that she was “born for [motherhood]” (310), and she sees no conflict between being a writer and being a mother.
Conversely, the scene in Chapter 13 in which Natsu criticizes herself in the mirror shows how deeply she has internalized misogynistic narratives. Natsu wonders how she, a “dried-up, worn-out woman […] [could] be the source of new life” (261). “Dried-up” and “worn-out” are misogynistic descriptors often applied to women who have aged past conventional desirability. Logically, physical appearance has nothing to do with fertility, but the pressure to remain young and sexy pervades every aspect of women’s lives. Natsu compares herself to “a pickled eggplant” (261), furthering the motif of alienation from the body.
Ultimately, internalized misogyny brings Natsu to wonder “if [she’s] really a woman” (312). Her inability to perform the traditional role of a woman makes her question the validity of her identity. Rika posits that womanhood is not defined by sexuality or marital status, but by “how much it hurts to be a woman” (314)—the physical and emotional pain of life in a patriarchal society. Rika laments the way men blame women for everything. She says that men can never understand this pain, because all men are uplifted by the patriarchy, just as all women are subjugated by it. To Rika, this gap in experience represents the fundamental difference between men and women.
Natsu’s encounter with Onda seems to validate Rika’s assertion. What for Natsu is a meaningful act of self-actualization is an opportunity for Onda to exercise his fetish. Onda targets single women who turn to his services out of desperation, providing another example of how women who live outside of the protections of a traditional life are uniquely vulnerable to predation.
Aizawa’s broken engagement illustrates how much traditional family structure matters in modern Japan. Aizawa’s fiancée called off their marriage because she wanted her future child to know the identity of their grandparents. She viewed the circumstances of Aizawa’s birth as an insurmountable flaw. This knowledge contextualizes why Aizawa can connect with Natsu where other men can’t. He understands the feeling of being an outsider, rejected by conventional society for characteristics he cannot change.
Aizawa’s confession of love forces Natsu to confront her insecurities about womanhood. Natsu doesn’t feel that she can sustain a romantic relationship because of her asexuality, which she sees as yet another way in which she fails to live up to the standard of the ideal woman. Between this and her persistent guilt over the ethics of having children, Natsu feels defeated. Ripping up her poem symbolizes her giving up on her dream.
