Snakes and Earrings (Originally published in Japan as Hebi ni Piasu) (Paperback)

by Hitomi Kanehara (Author), David Karashima (Designer)
Key Phrases: tongue hole, tongue stud, forked tongue

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Offsetting its highly conformist, nose-to-the-grindstone image, Japan maintains a subgenre of rebellious youth stories in literature and film. Kanehara's short novel, a winner of Japan's foremost award to new fiction writers, stands firmly in the subgenre's literary line. It has stirred a lot of sand because it includes plenty of deadpan sex, Kanehara was only 20 when it won the prize, and it is one of the first novels about Japan's newest adults, who, growing up after the Japanese economic bubble burst in the 1980s, know only a society no longer able to promise that good jobs will be especially remunerative or even obtainable. Lui is a freeter, or independent young adult, living on part-time jobs and affectlessly clubbing, drinking, drugging, and screwing. She meets literally fork-tongued Ama. She decides to have her tongue done likewise and becomes Ama's noncommittal lover, boffing tattooist Shiba on the side and never learning Ama's real name. Violence, heavy drinking, and death eventually disrupt this drama of youthful degeneracy that steadfastly rejects romanticism. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Description
An underground world.
A murder.
An international phenomenon.
Snakes and Earrings. . . .

Describing a world as amoral and fascinating as the landscapes of Less Than Zero and Trainspotting, this novel about a young woman living in the violent world of Japan’s underground youth culture is both shocking and strangely beautiful.

Enchanted by the snake-like tongue of a stranger called Ama, nineteen-year-old Lui takes a walk into another side of life. On the Tokyo streets, she finds a world where pain bleeds into pleasure. Where day fades into night. And where right turns into wrong.

An international bestseller.
Winner of the Akutagawa Prize.
Translated by David James Karashima.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (May 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525948899
• ISBN-13: 978-0525948896
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #930,374 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Dust of Teeth, August 29, 2005

By	Daitokuji31 (Black Glass) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

The Akutagawa Prize named after the prominent short story writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke has been awarded to whoever is considered the top new talent in Japanese literature for over the past seventy years. Past recipients include the literary heavyweights Abe Kobo and Oe Kenzaburo and more popular writers such as Murakami Ryu and Yu Miri. In 2003 two young women were awarded the prestigious award: Kanehara Hitomi, born August 8, 1983, and Wataya Risa, born February 1, 1984.

Although both novels have been translated into French, English reading audiences only have Kanehara's work available in English. Hopefully Wataya's work will be soon available in English as well, so we can see why the book caused such a stir.

Kanehara's Snakes and Earrings details the life of nineteen-year-old Nakazawa Lui. A bleach-blonde hostess who desires to have her tongue split like her boyfriend Ama's. After having her tongue pierced by Shiba-san, Lui desires to get a massive tattoo depicting a dragon and a Kirin. Instead of money, Shiba-san wants Lui to sleep with him. Although she has a boyfriend, Lui, entranced by the tattoo, willingly sleeps with Shiba-san who gets his jollies from choking the young woman. He also repeated informs her that he wants to kill her. Her boyfriend has also stated that he desired to be the one who killed her because he could not stand the thought of someone else doing so. Between two bloodthirsty men, Lui spends the rest of her time drinking, increasing the size of the hole in her tongue by inserting lower gauged studs, and working. Things seem to be in a repetitive cycle until the day Ama kills a member of the Yakuza, however, does Lui really care if something happens to Ama, an individual whose real name she does not even know?

Supposedly the main theme of Kanehara's 120-page novella is how well do individuals truly know each other. However, in my opinion, the theme is handled pretty heavy-handedly. Instead of coming out through character interaction, the theme is usually stated by Lui. "I don't know how old he is." I don't know where he works." And it is normally left at that until it is mentioned again. This theme is also common in the later works of Murakami Haruki; however, it is unfair of me to compare the works of a 56-year-old writer to those of a 22-year-old one.

Filled with kinky sex, one wonders if the novel struck more of a chord with readers because a young female author, she was 19-20 when she wrote the book, wrote on such matters than the actual literary merits of the book. However, being that Snakes and Earrings has been the best-selling Akutagawa prize-winning novel since Murakami Ryu's Almost Transparent Blue, it has created a few waves. Yet it remains to be seen if the novel and Kanehara have true staying power.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enthralling, Scathing, and for Everyone., May 23, 2005

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

Many of us were taught in English class that the theme of most novels can be understood as either "man against man," "man against nature" or "man against himself." And we are told that by the end of the novel, the main character should experience growth as a result of one of the above struggles. But post-modern realism does not concern itself with the convention of protagonist growth. A good example of such a novel is SNAKES AND EARRINGS, the award-winning first novel by Japanese author Hitomi Kanehara.

People always think that nineteen-year-old Lui Nakazawa, the narrator of SNAKES AND EARRINGS, is an orphan, but her parents are alive and well. There is "no trouble" in her family, she says, but her own destructive actions prove otherwise.

"Barbie-girl" Lui meets the tough-looking Ama in a Tokyo club and is drawn to his forked tongue. He explains the painful and bloody process to her, and she decides she too wants a forked tongue. Soon, Lui and Ama are an item, and she moves in with him. Before long she is also involved with the sadistic tattoo artist Shiba and then witnesses Ama beat a man to death (giving her the man's teeth as a token of his love for her). Lui seems ambivalent toward both Ama and Shiba and ponders such sad thoughts as who she would let kill her if she decided she wanted to die.

However, it is Ama who dies, the victim of horrific torture and rape, and finally Lui shows the emotion that surely has been just under the surface for a long time. But is she mourning for Ama himself or the loss of the idea of him? And if she really loved him, why does she choose to build a relationship with the man who surely killed him?

Kanehara's novel is short, 120 pages in a small hardback format, but it packs a powerful punch. Lui's story is one of disturbing alienation both from herself and those around her. No wonder everyone assumes she is an orphan; she seems rootless and needy. Lui's search for emotional feeling and connection is painful to read about because the closest she is able to come is with physical pain and practically anonymous interactions with people. After Ama goes missing she realizes that she didn't know anything about this man she was living with: she didn't know his real name, where he worked, if he had a family --- she only knew about his body and that he seemed to care for her.

Still, the point may be that Lui has not given up looking for emotional depth in the face of the emptiness she feels and experiences. That is, she is not quite yet a lost cause. But the reader senses that she is close to giving up on herself and the world. Lui does not grow or change over the course of the novel; she merely experiences as she moves from one tragic situation to another.

Kanehara's literary voice is raw and honest. SNAKES AND EARRINGS is a tale full of murder, sadism and body modification. It is a graphic, disturbing and scathing commentary on Japanese youth culture. Yet it is, in its way, enthralling and definitely powerful. It is not a novel for everyone in that it is unconventional and may even seem lurid to some readers. But for adventure readers, it is recommendable, especially as it is the first work from Kanehara, who has a promising career ahead of her.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better Without the Eyes, October 28, 2006

By	Roger Lathbury (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Snakes and Earrings (Hardcover)

How does a disaffected, suicidal nineteen year old so wholly alienated from the world that she is able to feel only in a sado-masochistic relationship reconcile to the conventional world? How can such a person retreat into what Dickens in _Little Dorritt_ dubs "a life of modest usefulness"? The answer seems to be: by loving her boyfriend's possible murderer, with whom she has betrayed him but who turns out to possess the same basic, caring impulses as she.

Hitomi Kanchara's 25,000 word novella is tightly organized and cleverly turned. I almost believe it. However, questions nag: What does Lui do with the transformed Shiba-san and herself now that she has sloughed off her old self? What values does her recovery imply? Are they a true dramatic answer to the bracing punk ethos that animates the first hundred pages? The atrophied sex life of the heroine and her new consort is symptomatic of a potential anomie as bad as the nihilism of the opening.

Ms. Kanchara sidesteps the confrontation toward which she has been leading, covering up the evasion by paradox. The march to nothing that drives the first hundred pages requires either a further extension toward death or a more filled-in affirmation. Unlike _L'Histoire d'O,_ to which _Snakes and Earrings_ bears superficial resemblance, this story of nihilism goes on a little long (it could end with the discovery of Shiba-san's potential treachery) or not long enough (if the author could imagine the life after the death of Ama.)

Still, it's a diverting fifty minute read.