Yuka Murayama

Asako works for a company specializing in wedding ceremonies. Her father's illness forces her to leave a well-paying job to devote herself to the family kimono shop. > She had been intimately familiar with kimonos since childhood, but nowadays almost no one wears them, except for the most important ceremonies. An anachronistic folklore, destined in any case for decline, a luxury permitted only to wealthy, idle women; an instrument for putting on airs: that was what they seemed to her . The grandmother shows her granddaughter the collection of antique kimonos, until then hidden away in numerous chests of drawers. Driven by her entrepreneurial spirit, Asako decides to open another shop, specializing in antique kimonos, veritable rarities. The novel shows promise; until, with no apparent connection to the title, the narrative slips into a tale of romantic entanglements, the classic infidelities of weary, monotonous couples. Asako meets the handsome Masataka, a successful real estate agent who puts her in touch with families ready to part with their old kimono collections. The respective spouses also enter the scene: Asako's husband, apathetic and long indifferent to sex, and Masataka's wife, who still suffers from the abuse inflicted upon her in childhood by an uncle. The four weave reciprocal “love affairs,” unbeknownst to their respective partners: relationships that unleash hitherto repressed sadomasochistic fantasies. The kimonos are lost along the way, supplanted by scenes verging on pornography and long, pointless dialogues. The protagonists attain sexual satisfaction; the reader slips into boredom, deciding to abandon the book. The question is as follows: what do kimonos have to do with sex scenes and a banal story of infidelity and weary marriages? One might assume the author intended to suggest that rigid, formal traditions have never truly shaped Japanese society; beneath the ostensible devotion to rules and detail, erotic drives are unleashed, all the more irrepressible for being repressed. *The Kimono Room* is a useless, cruel prison, a cage easily shattered at the first opportunity, from which one can never fully break free; one can only come to better understand oneself and those around them (see the epilogue). This dreadful novel is weighed down by reliance on a literary device all too often overused by writers. Each chapter describes the events and feelings from the point of view of each of the protagonists. As so often happens, the narrative is repetitive and prolix, forfeiting its overall cohesion. Why not read it? Insipid.