Snakes and Earrings

Snakes and Earrings
Hitomi Kanehara
Translated by David James Karamisha
Fiction, 2005, 120 pages

When Ama shows Lui his forked tongue, she decides to get one too. Several days later, Ama takes her to Shiba-san's shop to get her tongue pierced. Over the months that follow, she'll use increasingly larger studs to stretch her tongue, prior to taking the final step of splitting it. Along the way there is lots of sex, beer and pain. Lui faces the aftermath of two murders and becomes anorexic.

This award winning, first novel is a story of transformation. Although the three main characters have piercings, tattoos and more extreme body modifications, these transformations are merely physical. Lui's transformation is to be spiritual. In the end, Lui's transformation is both subtle and ambiguous. The book ends as Lui's transformation begins. It's up to the reader to determine where Lui's transformation will take her.

Had she been American, rather than Japanese, Lui might have behaved and acted differently. Still, the story is sufficiently universal that it transcends language and culture. However, though it may be universal, it is not typical. In its way, it resembles another short novel, "The Story of O." In that novel, two alternative endings are provided. Hitomi Kanehara provides only one, but its ambiguity suffices.

More reviews of Snakes and Earrings

A cute story with a profound moral

A small sparrow shivered while snow fell all around him. The sparrow would surely die in the cold. Then a cow wandered along and defecated on the sparrow. Warmed by the cow pie, the sparrow stopped shivering and began to sing. A passing cat heard the sparrow's joyful song and ate him.

Moral: Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy. Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend. And, if you are up to your neck in shit and can still manage to be happy, for Heaven's sake keep your mouth shut.

To Bee or Not To Bee

Splendid as it is, the Internet is not necessarily trustworthy. Thus, I am unable to confirm or refute the remark, attributed to Einstein that if honeybees became extinct, mankind would follow within a few years. Still, there’s a general consensus among sources, including the BBC and The New York Times, regarding the strange disappearance of honeybees in 24 of the United States at a loss rate of 30 to 70 percent.
They’re calling it colony collapse disorder (CCD), and they don’t know its cause. Dr. Clarence Collison, who heads Mississippi State University’s Entomology Department, reports that researchers have observed a number of pathogens affecting adult bees. Of these, the majority of pathogens are linked to stress related illnesses. A Penn State scientist has established that these bees have weakened immune systems, Collison adds.
This is not, however, the first time bee populations have dwindled. Populations dwindled during the early nineties and middle seventies. A bee population collapse also occurred in 1896, however Collison rates the current collapse as the worst in his experience.
The magnitude of population collapse is shocking. The Washington Post reported on one beekeeper’s transport of two truckloads of bees for use in pollinating almond trees. When he arrived in California, most of his cargo was dead. Often beekeepers discover their hives have been vacated by all but the queen and the young. Some have speculated that sick bees don’t return to their hive in order to prevent its other members from becoming contaminated. Others have speculated that bees are being blinded by increased UV light due to an enlarged hole in the ozone layer. Another possible explanation is that environmental toxins cause them to become disoriented and unable to find their way home.
Though most reports of CCD have come from the United States, Linda Moulton Howe reports that nine countries in Europe and Canada also now are reporting massive declines in bee populations. Bee pollination is a fundamental necessity on which depends much of the food consumed by animals and men. Even if Einstein didn’t make the remark about extinction, anyone who’s learned about the birds and the bees should be concerned about CCD.