Known for her satirical and absurdist writing style, Izumi Suzuki was a leading figure in the science fiction and cyberpunk genres in Japan during the 1960s and 70s. Her writing focused on such topics as feminism, pop culture, artificial intelligence, robots, and the relationship between humans and technology. Her influence can be seen in the works of many Japanese artists and writers who followed, and she is often considered a pioneering figure in Japanese speculative fiction.
Born in 1949, Ms. Suzuki graduated from Shizuoka Prefectural Itō High School in 1968, after which she worked as a bar hostess, a keypunch operator, and eventually found her way into modeling and acting, working with film director Kōji Wakamatsu, photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, and avant-garde dramatist and poet Shūji Terayama. After being shortlisted for the Bungakukai Prize for New Writers, she was encouraged to write science fiction by Taku Mayumura, a haiku poet and science fiction writer. She rose to national attention in Japan after her stories were published in S-F Magazine, Japan’s first successful commercial science fiction magazine. It was at S-F Magazine that she wrote stories like "Women and Women" which imagines a utopia where men are confined to a Gender Exclusion Terminal Occupancy Zone, or GETO.
Life might merely be a momentary bolt of lightning in the dark, after which the self melts into infinite darkness."
—Izumi Suzuki
Suzuki's most well-known work is Tadaima Orzuba (Homecoming Orzuba), which was published in 1972. The book is a satirical retelling of the biblical story of the Fall, told from the perspective of a girl named Orzuba. The book is full of absurd humor and cultural commentary, and is considered to be a classic of Japanese popular culture. It has been widely praised for its humorous and subversive take on religion, culture, and gender roles. Other notable works include Sora no Otoshimono (The Heavenly Bodies), Kikai no Sekai (The World of Machines), and Bokura no Machi (Our Town). She also wrote several essays and short stories.
Suzuki was married to Kaoru Abe, a jazz musician with whom she had a daughter, Azusa. The marriage was notoriously chaotic, having been depicted in the novel Endless Waltz, by Mayumi Inaba and later made into a film by Kōji Wakamatsu. The marriage lasted five years, and Abe died from an accidental drug overdose shortly after their divorce. Suzuki committed suicide in 1986 by hanging at the age of 36.
It is by pure chance that Izumi Suzuki has been recently introduced to English-speaking readers. An editor at Verso books happened to stumble upon a reference to Suzuki while reading an academic text and this prompted a quest to learn more about the Japanese cult writer. Hit Parade of Tears, Terminal Boredom, and Set My Heart on Fire published by Verso are the first collections of stories to be translated into English. And as it happens, these three books are now available in the Izumi Suzuki collection on Subatomik.
References:
Izumi Suzuki: A Legendary Sci-Fi Writer Rediscovered, by Genie Harrison
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
Images courtesy © Nobuyoshi Araki
