The narratives of this coronavirus are not “neo-” but “re-”: returning to the past, revealing existing problems, and reclaiming memories lost and lessons forgotten. In her 2021 short story collection Unsocial Distance, Kanehara Hitomi returns to an earlier motif of rebellion against social norms through individual bodily practices. Especially in the age of lockdown, quarantine, and other government-implemented spatial restrictions, her characters cultivate their own space in an escapist attempt. Through unhealthy eating habits, abortion, and non-reproductive sex, her characters self-marginalize to evade socialization into a system of (re)productive labor. The coronavirus is a metaphor for a social structure from which individuals are unable to break free, extending a sociopolitical stance consistent with Kanehara’s representations of the Japanese society.

Mina Qiao teaches Japanese literature at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Her research interests focus on gender, body and sexuality, and space in contemporary Japanese literature. Her recent publications include Into the Fantastical Spaces of Contemporary Japanese Literature (Lexington, 2022) and The Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2023).