All the Lovers in the Night by the Japanese writer, Mieko Kawakami is a beautiful novel exploring the quiet tragedy of the ordinary life and loneliness of its inhabitants. Written with profound compassion, this novel is also an ode to the life of introverted individuals and to those who seek basic human interaction and affection rooted in integrity and empathy.
The novel explores themes of loneliness, solitude, the human need to love and to be loved, the awakening of self-worth, the meaning of kindness as well as society’s indifference toward those who sink into depression. It also reflects on memory and how we remember people who are no longer part of our lives, the perception of one’s occupation as the indication of person’s place within the society, women’s roles in society as single women, married women with children, and unmarried women with a child, the importance of choice in life highlighting what we give up every time we choose a particular path.
“I was convinced that there was no way I could be any more alone but now I’d finally realised how alone I truly was. Despite the crowds of people, and all the different places, a limitless supply of sounds and colours paced together, there was nothing here that I could reach out and touch. (….) there was no other place for me to go, no home for me to return to (…). I was tired of dealing with people. (…) I could not think of a single thing about me that would be worth sharing.”
The main protagonist, Fuyuko, is a 34-year-old woman who has spent her entire adult life working as a proofreader. Her job, as she says, comes down to “hunting for mistakes”. She observes that “proofreading is a lonely business, full of lonely people”. All she can say about herself is that she has lived in the same apartment for a long time and has not formed any meaningful relationships in her adulthood.
Since her youth, Fuyuko has avoided groups and socialising, and as a result, she has never had close friends. She dislikes sudden changes or surprise calls. She does not have anyone to go out with or chat with for hours. While working in the office, she would usually return home at eight in the evening, followed by a simple dinner she prepared for herself. At work, no one ever spoke to Fuyuko unless they needed something from her.
“Their indifference, over time, showed hints of bitterness, which became apparent in their silence and their looks, to the point when going to work became difficult to bear. (…) The more I worked in silence, and the longer I stayed at the company, the worse it felt to be there.”
While working in the office, her coworkers started gossiping about Fuyuko’s private life, asking uncomfortable questions to make fun of her. When the opportunity arose, she decided to leave her office job and became a freelance proofreader which allowed her to work from home without many social interactions.
One of her favourite habits was to go out for a night walk on her birthday which falls on the Christmas Eve. This walk lifted her mood, “as if the pieces of the world before my eyes were telling me some kind of story.” On one occasion Fuyuko managed to catch the glimpse of her reflection in a window. That image looked absolutely miserable, “a dictionary definition of a miserable person.”
Fuyuko is often overwhelmed by daily interactions with others. On returning home, she often lies down exhausted on the kitchen floor and gazes at the ceiling. She is an overthinker, often analyses things and situations form all possible angles. Over time. she finds a refuge in alcohol. Drinking allows her to let go of her usual self. Ultimately, Fuyuko longs to love and to be loved, to experience a modicum of affection.
Throughout the book, Kawakami depicts the position of women in society, their compliance with social norms, and how they are perceived based on marital status. Fuyuko, single and struggling to form meaningful relationships, is viewed by some older women as self-absorbed and unproductive. To them, her life seems easy, while their own lives, with families and work, appear more meaningful. One colleague remarks, “Unless you have children, no one will call you a great woman.” According to these social norms, a woman’s worth is defined by marriage and motherhood.
Noriko, Fuyuko’s closest school friend is now married with children, not working, stuck in a loveless marriage where she and her husbands both have extramarital affairs. Facing the reality of their broken marriage would not change anything for Noriko and her husband. Her status as a non-working mother and wife contributes to her inability to make choices and committing to an independent life. Noriko reveals to Fuyuko that she often thinks of the future when her children are all grown up and then she and her husband will not have much to talk about.
Finally, we encounter Hijiri who is an unmarried woman expecting a child on her own – a situation looked down upon, even perceived by some women as “worse than a murder.”
Kawakami depicts various scenarios of women’s position within a modern society and shows that each of these scenarios can bring equally sadness, disappointment and lack of fulfillment. The focus here is put on one’s ability to have a choice in life on how one wants to live and not on the specific path that might bring happiness if one decides to follow it. There are constant questions which often comes up throughout the book whether we should live alone or share life with someone else, whether we should have children or not and what we are forced to give up each time we choose a given path.
Different people enter Fuyuko’s life at different stages of her life. Some befriend her so they can feel superior about themselves, they use Fuyuko to validate themselves by forcing their way of perceiving the world on her. One of these people would be Hijiri who often has no concept of other people’s feelings. Mizuno, Fuyuko’s high school boyfriend shows the most independent attitude to life in this story. He leaves their hometown to make his own choices, to live on his own terms. For him to have a choice in life is paramount. At the same time, he appears to be very indifferent to Fuyuko’s emotions and lacking emotional intelligence. Fuyuko has never heard from him or of him after the graduation. She does not have many memories of him, he becomes another lost connection and there is hardly any mark of his existence on her memory despite them sharing together an intimate moment in their early youth. The issue of memories and how one remembers the past encounters and people is also depicted in Fuyuko’s relationship with her high school friend, Noriko with whom she has maintained a sporadic digital contact.
Kindness is very much appreciated and noticed by Fuyuko as this emotion has not often entered her life. One day she finds out that one of her old bosses passed away. They were not very close but as Fuyuko reflects he was one of the very few people who showed her kindness when they were working together. Now on a day of his funeral people talk about him indifferently making assumptions about the nature of his death including a possible suicide and his depressive nature. Even in the most tragic situations people seem to be more interested in gossip and indifferent attitude, rather than the humanity and empathy.
When it comes to love, Fuyuko’s life changes when she meets an older man of 58 years old, Mitsutsuka for whom she develops feelings of affection and love. Things they share during their encounters might seem childish at first, but they all constitute important building blocks of their fragile relationship. Fuyuko feels as if she made some sort of mark in his memory. Often the questions she wants to ask Mitsutsuka do not find their way into words. She is unable to communicate her real feelings to Mitsutsuka resulting in her sinking deep into depression.
When in the throes of depression, Fuyuko spends the most of her days in bed. She loses her ability to discern what part of the day it is; she could not summon energy to prepare simple meals replying mainly on fast food. She is constantly exhausted by the simple tasks. At this stage, Fuyuko questions her choices in life whether her job, her place to live, not having any meaningful relationships were a result of her own choice she made at some point or whether her current situation was the result of not choosing anything. She feels that she faked it all the way and she did the things she was told to. She was so scared of being hurt that she disregarded her own needs for love, affection and intimacy. Her only treasure are memories of her and Mitsutsuka meeting and talking, how she felt when she was around him. But those memories are slowly disappearing similarly to the memories of her schoolfriend, Noriko and others who once showed her some kindness.
When she finally expresses her love for Mitsutsuka, tears overwhelmed her. Fuyuko did not remember when last time she cried so much — she cried for all the time she felt alone and hurt. However, that kindness shown by Mitsutsuka was short-lived and used as a cover for deception even though used in a good faith by him. His working situation was part of this deception and indicated the importance of one’s occupation within the contemporary society, to the extent when it conditions people’s attitude towards others and their relationships. Fuyuko’s feelings were somehow rejected and disregarded. She had to spend a long time to slowly work her way back to the person she used to be prior to meeting Mitsutsuka.
We depart Fuyuko’s life at the stage when she spends most of her nights walking and thinking “about it being midnight somewhere in the world and thought about people living there, people who spend their nights alone, alone through the night”.
All the Lovers in the Night is a profoundly moving novel, written with extraordinary empathy and understanding of the human condition. I highly recommend this book and I will definitely explore more works by this author.
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