The Monster Next Door: Monstrosity, Matricide, and Masquerade in Kirino Natsuo’s Real World

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article considers the textual importance of matricide in Kirino Natsuo’s 2004 novel Real World. On the one hand, Kirino deploys the death of the maternal figure, which is committed by a teenage male, to critique systemic violence against women. On the other hand, she uses the death – which occurs prior to the events of the novel – to index the ways in which Japanese youth navigate recessionary Japan. This article’s analysis of the novel demonstrates the idea that? although life after the recession has been consistently defined by rampant rejection of Japanese hegemony, including the sustained questioning of home and school life, interpellation is still a practical necessity. In Real World (based loosely on a real-life incident), the teenage killer and the high school girls who help him evade capture are ultimately punished for their transgression of social norms; Worm, as the killer is known, is apprehended by the police, and the friendship that binds the girls together is fractured beyond repair. This article thus identifies a conservative pulse in this writer’s work that, on the surface, reads almost like a celebration of dangerous living.