Review: 'Vanishing World' by Sayaka Murata, trans. by Ginny Tapley Takemori

A while back, I was lowkey disappointed by a book which I hoped would address motherhood and reproduction in an intriguing and different way. Thankfully, Vanishing World does precisely that, in a way that might shock or surprise some readers! Thanks to Grove Atlantic, Grove Press, and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 14/04/2025
Publisher: Grove Atlantic; Grove Press

Sayaka Murata has proven herself to be one of the most exciting chroniclers of the strangeness of society, x-raying our contemporary world to bizarre and troubling effect. Her depictions of a happily unmarried retail worker in Convenience Store Woman and a young woman convinced she is an alien in Earthlings have endeared her to millions of readers worldwide. Vanishing World takes Murata’s universe to a bold new level, imagining an alternative Japan where attitudes to sex and procreation are wildly different to our own.

As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.” Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?

The urge to procreate is, to a certain extent, encoded into our DNA. It is an urge we share with all other animals, the drive to survive. Humans are something a little special, though, with how conscious we are and the societies and cultures we create, and so we can live our lives in different ways. The idea we have, nowadays, of what "traditional" is is not actually as old as people like to imagine. The white picket fence fantasy, of a working father and a stay-at-home mother, 2.5 children, two cars etc. is a fantasy that was enforced and created after the second World War. Women had entered the workforce with many men being drafted into armies and, after the end of the war, these women needed to be forced back into the home. The imagine of the woman entirely dedicated to her children and her home is a propaganda image. In Vanishing World, the second World War has a different kind of effect on the world. With the men away, birth rates are dropping and developments in artificial insemination take off. In this new world, love exists but outside the structures we know. Family is redefined, as is sex, which hardly exists anymore. As the title implies, Murata explores a world in which much of what we think of as innate and important is indeed vanishing, and it is a disconcerting reading experience.

Amane is growing up in a world quite different from ours. While her parents still conceived her by "copulating" like animals, most children are created through artificial insemination and sex has become something rare. Most people prefer to fall in love with fictional characters now, rather than real people. Confused about her own creation, Amane insists on figuring out her own instincts, falling deeply for both fictional and real people and experimenting with sex. The biggest taboo is sex with one's spouse, since that's family after all, and so Amane has different lovers while married to Saku. Eventually they move to Experiment City, a place where children are raised communally and men can also get pregnant. Amane is a fascinating main character, so clearly searching for something, for an answer to herself and her own instincts, that you can't help but feel for her. This confusion about herself is quite recognisable, even though she lives in a world so drastically different from our own. We all want to know where we come from, understand our bodies and their desires, figure out what we are here to do. 

Sayaka Murata does some really interesting things in Vanishing World. The writing is incredibly direct, exploring Amane's thoughts on love and sex, the physicality of it all. As such, there are aspects of the story which are uncomfortable, and I think they are intended to be. With how odd sex and love and family have become in this world, the experience of them on the page is also odd. For example, sex between a husband and wife has become something that is considered incest. Sex itself is so rare that it becomes utterly clinical and oddly distanced, making the whole experience of it weird. Family relationships have been renegotiated to the extent that boundaries become blurred between children and parents. The biggest element of this is the oddness of the children raised in Experiment City. While technically they are loved and supported by all adults there, they seem like little puppets, pets for everyone to play with but not really take care of. I think readers going into Vanishing World should be prepared to encounter these uncomfortable, boundary-crossing themes and see them for what, I think, Murata intended them, namely to make us think about our own societies, the things we consider acceptable and normal, our relationships with our bodies and others. 

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

Vanishing World is a fascinating look at a radically different world, in which reproduction, love, family, and sex become entirely separated from one another. How does this world look? What will it do to us?