Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution.

What in Japanese society is Convenience Store Woman taking aim at? Does the satire have relevance to our own culture? How would you describe the author's attitude toward Keiko? Is it one of condescension, disapproval, acceptance, admiration? Or does Murato view her heroine in a neutral fashion? As she approaches her 40s, she's receiving greater pressure from her friends and family to be cured', namely, to marry and settle down, and leave her part time job. We’re all store workers.' What do you think of that statement? What do you think she means by it?Ħ. Convenience Store Woman is about Keiko, who has worked at the same convenience store for 18 years. When Shiraha complains about the convenience store job, Keiko tells him, 'Shiraha, we’re in the twenty-first century! Here in the convenience store we’re not men and women.

What is Keiko's relationship with Shiraha? What do you think of him, especially his lectures on the Stone Age-about the men who hunt and those who don't.ĥ. ( Follow-up to Question 3) What does it suggest about Keiko's internal life (her soul, her personality) that she can 'hear the store's voice telling what it wanted, how it wanted to be.' She goes on to say, ' I understood it perfectly.' What does she mean that she understands the store 'perfectly.'Ĥ. How does she think of her fellow employees?ģ. All her life, Japanese convenience store worker Keiko Furukura has had to teach herself how to behave around others. How does her job there lend purpose to her life? Consider, for example, the manual that prescribes how she is to conduct herself with customers. In what way does Keiko view Small Mart as an almost-utopia.

Talk about the various aspects of her behavior that make her an oddball.Ģ. We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN … then take off on your own:ġ. Well, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman is not a ripple but an elegant underwater earthquake whose shock waves will haunt the shores of the reader’s consciousness long after the last.

The convenience store woman