Scorpions

Translated by Michael Day

A shocking and transgressive work from one of the key figures of postwar Japanese fiction

Yumiko Kurahashi's 1963 novella Scorpions takes the form of a transcript of a one-sided interview with L following the arrest and institutionalization of her twin brother K. The two have played a role in a series of horrifying deaths culminating in the murder of their mother.

Through a first-person narrative that varies in tone from scientifically clinical to darkly humorous, mingling together references to the Bible and Greek mythology, odd bits of dialogue and obtuse descriptions, we learn of K and L's shocking crimes as well as the professional and personal entanglement of L and an older man they call the Red Pig, their mother's former lover.

Scorpions remains, after more than half a century, a shockingly transgressive text. It bears allegiance to the most radical French fiction of its time, particularly the work of Jean Genet, an author Kurahashi admired, whose own novels explored the sanctification of criminal behavior.

Yumiko Kurahashi (1935–2005) was an influential Japanese writer of experimental fiction. She was nominated early in her career for the Akutagawa prize and later won the Izumi Kyoka Prize for Literature for her anti-utopian work Journey to Amanon.