Izumi Suzuki, This Bad Girl: The World of a Countercultural Icon

Nonconformist, provoking, and ahead of her time. Izumi Suzuki might be one of the most significant and prominent writers of Japanese contemporary literature, and her short stories, now available in English collections, are finally receiving their well-deserved attention.

Sadly, this late recognition limited access to much of her background. However, with the small accessible information, it seems clear that Suzuki could have been an IT girl of her generation.

The Life and Legacy of Izumi Suzuki

Born in 1949 in Itō, Shizuoka prefecture, Suzuki grew up in the post-war national landscape, where counter-cultural art consequently took over as anti-establishment sentiment. Growing up, she was deeply intrigued by the American culture "brought over" by the military occupation in Japan.

She spent most of her 20s in multicultural environments such as Honmoku and Yokosuka, famous for importing music and films from the States. Unsurprisingly, many of her stories include related references, like characters listening to Rolling Stones or groupie culture, as in Hit Parade of Tears' story, Hey, It's a Love Psychedelic!

Suzuki moved to Tokyo after high school and worked at first as a bar hostess. She became a member of Shūji Terayama’s avant-garde acting troupe but started her artistic career by starring in "pink films." Moreover, she modeled for erotic photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, whose photos would later become the covers of her books’ recent English-translated editions. Said portraits were, in fact, compiled in a post-mortem collection titled Izumi, this bad girl, which enriched her characteristic aesthetic image. Painted nails, piercing eyes, and a cigarette in hand represent some of the most prominent characteristics that embellished her silhouette. These at-the-time unorthodox pictures and her bohemian dark look granted her the status of a cultural figure.

In 1973, she married Kaoru Abe, a free jazz saxophonist, and had a daughter. After a brief but tumultuous marriage, they divorced in 1977. Abe died of an overdose a year later, at 29. The years that followed his death were the most prolific of her career, as said events significantly influenced her writing. Eight years after Abe's passing, at 36 years old, Suzuki took her own life.

Abe and Suzuki's problematic relationship became the subject of Mayumi Inaba's novel Endless Waltz (1992), then adapted into a semi-erotic film (1995) by Kōji Wakamatsu. The fictionalization of the pair angered their daughter, who eventually sued the book author for their portrayal. But this adaptation, both written and visualized, further enhanced the ideal of Izumi Suzuki as a seductive girl, creative but passionate, and an abuse victim for the love’s sake of an almost musical genius.

Stories from Another Planet – and Another Gaze

As for her writing career, which became full-time after winning the 1970 Bungakukai Prize for New Writers, the author's involvement with the sci-fi narrative was just by pure chance – and necessity. She first got published in SF Magazine with her short story The Witch's Apprentice (re-named Trial Witch for the collection Hit Parade of Tears) thanks to a connection with author Taku Mayumura. Scholar Mari Kotani stated that Suzuki didn't think of herself as a sci-fi writer but stuck to the genre for economic necessity and, perhaps, personal reasons.

Unfortunately, her works remained for many years unknown, as the sci-fi world, raging in those years, was considered a strict "boys club." That’s one of the reasons why there is so little English information about her, as the male artists, even if less notorious, were not given the same treatment. However, this personal detachment from this male-dominated literary environment led her to stylistically stand out from the works written by her peers of the opposite sex. For example, in her writing, gender and genre are intertwined, and many of the related subjects come alive thanks to the typical science-fiction elements. In Women and Women, from the collection Terminal Boredom: Stories, she wrote about a world where men almost died out, with the remaining ones isolated in the "Gender Exclusion Terminal Occupancy Zone – or the GETO." This matriarchal tale explores with wit the consequences of a male-dominated past in a role-reversed future.

Her stories evoke ambivalent feelings, such as resignation and struggling resistance. Even if set in different eras or planets, many cultural references to pop culture, art, and historical events persist. By doing so, Suzuki's scenarios approached many subjects still central in contemporary fiction and media.

An Intergenerational Depiction of Japan

Although not overly political, Suzuki involuntarily introduced social issues through characters and events. By mainly using a typical Japanese narrative structure, such as shi shousetsu (I-novels), she wrote stories that fathom the female role in society or the impending influence of technology and human relationships. Coming from her personal experiences, she paradoxically gave form to realistic and universal portrayals of womanhood and Japan's contemporary society.

Suzuki’s novels perfectly depict and incorporate the state of her generation, which, surprisingly enough, shares the same apathetic and nihilistic contemporary condition. A condition caused by a post-bellic and post-capitalist world shaped by over-consumption and coldness where, as Suzuki wrote, "nothing eases the boredom." The quote is from the story Terminal Boredom, from the collection of the same name, and depicts a future (or present) where people, especially the youth, don't interact with each other anymore, preferring screens over face-to-face encounters. This lack of connection and over-digitalization desensitizes the general public, giving space for ruthless violence.

Furthermore, her life memories and those of others she met catch the eye in her narrations. As said before, writing for her perhaps wasn't only an economic necessity but a way to contemplate existential subjects from personal inspiration. For example, from the same previous collection, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and The Old Seaside Club, through a weird concept of time, portray the consequences of drug addiction. The fleeting of time and addiction were two topics that were central to her real life, given the underground and artistic environment where she worked, lived, and connected with other people, like her ex-husband. As she wrote in the second story: “This isn’t about “redoing things”. There’s no starting over. […] You go through some similar experiences every time- it’s about letting go, basically.”

Her literary world is catastrophic, almost utopic. Set in a post-capitalistic aftermath, between the tech and the magical, Suzuki's focus is a detached and fossilized youth engulfed in addiction, mental health issues, and loneliness. On planets where technology relentlessly develops to mend the faults of man-made disasters, society and governments are inherently broken and impossible to fix.

The dislocation and oscillation among the past, the present, and the future make Suzuki's bibliography still relevant today. Moreover, her unapologetic narration of gender and society, with the touch of an anxious heart and a pop culture obsession, gives birth to a timeless literary world. 

Whether out of necessity or not, she heartfeltly wrote of different universes and people that stuck with her audience, conveying her immortal status in Japanese literature. Quoting You May Dream (from Terminal Boredom: Stories): “Different kinds of people belong in different kinds of worlds. And, lucky enough for me, mine’s a world within reach. I want to keep on living. Forever. And that’s how it’s going to be. I’ll become a lone eye somewhere, floating, without consciousness.” And, perhaps, she unconsciously did build a legacy for herself.

With a broken spirit, Izumi Suzuki stands out as an innovative writer and persona, ahead of her time, who embodies in life and work the broken youth from the 70s onward. And, like many of them, from yesterday and today, she was a victim of the violence and desperation of the time. But her countercultural soul timelessly accompanies many intergenerational readers.

Written by Federica Giampaolo