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Scorpions
by
Kurahashi Yumiko
general information | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | Scorpions |
| Author: | Kurahashi Yumiko |
| Genre: | Novella |
| Written: | (1963) (Eng. 2025) |
| Length: | 65 pages |
| Original in: | Japanese |
| Availability: | Scorpions - US |
| Scorpions - UK | |
| Scorpions - Canada | |
| from: Bookshop.org (US) | |
| directly from: Wakefield Press |
- Japanese title: 蠍たち
- First printed in the journal 小説中央公論 (1963) and then in book-form, in a 1968 collection
- Translated and with an Introduction by Michael Day
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Our Assessment:
B+ : appealingly strange; strong little work
See our review for fuller assessment.
The complete review's Review:
Scorpions opens with a brief cover-note, explaining what is presented here -- "the transcript of an interview with L, a defendant on trial for the murder of her mother", part of a psychological evaluation by the authorities.
We also learn that L.M. is a twenty-year-old university student and that she has a fraternal twin, K., who is also charged with murder (the same one) and who refuses to be interviewed but is composing a written statement.
What then follows is more monologue than interview: there is no real give and take here, with L essentially silencing the interviewer from her opening sentence: "Tell us about what happened over the summer, you say"; similarly, later, without the interviewer getting a word in, L says: "What did he mean by that, you ask ? Let me explain, Doc".
It's indicative of her self-assuredness: she's cocky and not at all defensive about what she is accused of doing; indeed, she quite merrily admits to (and eventually describes) the killing of her mother -- as well as other outrageous (and criminal) activity.
The twins' (deceased) father had been: "a towering figure in the world of business" (he was CEO of a mining company), but they had clearly rebelled against that: as L puts it: "Our family had once borne the barbaric title of bourgeois", while she and her brother had since been active in the leftist student activities of the day, as, as L quotes someone saying: "Until last year, they were leaders of the All-Japan Student Association" -- described by translator Michael Day in his Introduction as a: "far-left organization" active in violent protests of the day (as, indeed, the 全学連 was).
They were members of the Central Executive Committee -- but tellingly had moved beyond that; as Day also notes: "The specter of a radical political party hovers over many of Kurahashi's novels and stories. Sometimes named and sometimes not, the 'party' is always a target of scorn and ridicule".
L is and acts very much as individual -- or at least as half of a pair.
We learn that, hardly surprisingly, when she describes her -- their -- room:
K and I had resided in this room, which resembled the brain of a person with bipolar disorder, since our birth.More recently:
I had spent a week pulling book after book from our voluminous library, casting each aside, until the mountain of books collapsed upon itself, and ever since, sentimentally attached to this chaos, we had been competing to adorn the room with books and rubbish and bits of paper. [...] It was summer, and I typically wore only a slip, K only underwear. It felt good to roll about atop the cool books.Their mother -- "To K and me she was simply the OLD BAG". though they flatteringly refer to her as MADAME when speaking to her -- is a mess of a woman, "grown fat, as if from malevolent spirits", and they keep her much like an animal; she's generally no longer sufficiently in her right mind to protest.
An old admirer of hers who had been at university with the twins' father, the president of a large publishing company, S -- also called RED PIG --, offers L a job which she takes up (unenthusiastically, but it's good money) -- leading her also to get to know his son, Q; both men pursue L Meanwhile, K gets involved with a girl, Yukari -- but the twins also continue to be close, and then closer, the dam breaking ("'This is no laughing mater, K. We have committed an abomination.' I tried to say it with a straight face but failed"), with things soon getting really out of hand, when they join Yukari, Q, and RED PIG on an outing to an isolated place in Hokkaido. Here, the twins really start acting up -- finding ideal circumstances: "for two scorpions to run amok". Incest is the least of it, and their fellow travelers do not fare well. Once back home, it's mom's turn .....
In what is the closest to her excusing or explaining at least the crime they are standing trial for, L says:
We all yearn for vengeance against the being that excreted us into this world, do we not, Doc ? You ask if our intent was to kill ? Don't doubt that we burned with murderous rage from the moment we were born. In fact, it was this alone that sustained us.L's account is quite disturbing, as she and her brother do things that are ugly and perverse, without much sense of guilt, remorse, or concern about any possible consequences. For all that, it's surprisingly winning, L's youthful exuberance not quite excusing her actions, but making them, in some respects, understandable (if hardly relatable). What works particularly well is her almost gleeful tone -- with Day's translation nicely presenting an English version of that. There's also quite a bit of sex, for example, but it's described in lush, almost absurd terms (presumably also to avoid any problems with censorship) -- it's agreeably ridiculous. Day's explanations in the Introduction, of some of the choices he made in translating the text, are also helpful, and the choices, down to one of a: "a subtle yet jarring mix of registers as the best available equivalent" to capture the female voice (as the Japanese much more easily does).
Despite all the darkness of what happens here, there's a lightness to the account as well; L (and K) come across as (completely) amoral but not immoral or evil. Scorpions is humorous, but Kurahashi's comic touch is particularly deft, the biting satire softened in L's expression, the burlesque not just coming across as ridiculous exaggeration. Scorpions is surprisingly fun -- which is much harder to pull of in a transgressive work (which it certainly is) than most seem to realize.
Scorpions is a strange little work but one that is also -- despite what is described here -- appealing; Kurahashi doesn't write merely to be shocking (though she manages that as well) and, in L's convincing, confident, youthful (but not juvenile) voice, is particularly successful (with Day seeming to hit just the right notes in his translation helping things along here as well).
- M.A.Orthofer, 29 December 2025
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Scorpions:
- Wakefield Press publicity page
- See Index of Japanese literature
- Other books from Wakefield Press under review
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Japanese author Kurahashi Yumiko (倉橋由美子) lived 1935 to 2005.
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© 2025 the complete review
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