Title: Herbivore
Subtitle: My Life as a Corporate Specimen
Series: Japanesque TS
Author: Yulia Yu. Sakurazawa
Welcome to this space dedicated to exploring the intricate, often challenging, and always thought-provoking novels of Yulia Yu. Sakurazawa. While navigating themes common to contemporary fiction – alienation, societal pressures, the search for meaning – my work often delves into the complex and sometimes fraught territory of identity, particularly regarding gender and bodily autonomy. It’s crucial, however, to approach these explorations with nuance, especially when considering them within an LGBTQ+ context.
My novels don’t always present straightforward narratives of self-discovery or triumphant transitions in the way often celebrated (and rightly so) within the community. Instead, they often utilize transformations – sometimes voluntary, sometimes profoundly involuntary – as a lens through which to examine broader societal structures, power dynamics, and the very definition of the self.
Take, for instance, my novel Herbivore: My Life as a Corporate Specimen. This story features a protagonist, Rui Terakawa, who undergoes significant physical and social gender transformation. However, this change is not initiated by Rui himself. It is imposed upon him as the chillingly logical endpoint of a bizarre corporate wellness program and the desires of powerful women who come to control his life.
Therefore, Herbivore is not a conventional transition story. It does not celebrate finding one’s true gender identity through personal realization. Instead, it uses the trope of transformation to pose unsettling questions: What happens when gender is dictated by external forces? How is the body treated as a resource or a project by those in power? What does bodily autonomy mean when societal or corporate systems seek to redefine you for their own purposes? The narrative explores the imposition of gender, the potential for coercion within power imbalances, and the psychological consequences of having one’s identity fundamentally altered by others.
This approach might be challenging for some readers. The depiction of involuntary transformation can be disturbing, and it’s vital to distinguish this fictional exploration from the lived realities and struggles for self-determination within the trans community. My intent is not to sensationalize, but to use these extreme scenarios to dissect the pressures, expectations, and sometimes terrifying possibilities inherent in how society constructs and enforces identity categories, including gender.
The exploration of non-conforming identities and experiences, the subversion of traditional gender roles (albeit through a dark lens in Herbivore), and the questioning of biological essentialism are threads that connect my work to broader LGBTQ+ concerns, even when the narratives themselves are unconventional or disturbing. They are stories about what it means to exist outside the norm, whether by choice or by force, and the often-uncomfortable ways society reacts.
This blog aims to foster discussion around these complex themes. To look at how fiction, even challenging fiction, can illuminate aspects of the human condition related to identity, power, and the ongoing struggle to define oneself in a world that often tries to do it for us. Thank you for joining this exploration.