Breaking OUT of Japan.(Natsuo Kirino's book "OUT")(Critical Essay)

Few Japanese novelists--and fewer of those women--have been widely read in English. Natsuo Kirino looks set to change that with "OUT," her controversial six-year-old best seller, just released in the United States (368 pages. Kodansha International. Translated by Stephen Snyder). The novel tackles disturbing themes: the subjugation of women, domestic abuse and a woman's murder of her husband. Yet Kirino, 51, one of Japan's most popular crime and mystery writers, says she wrote "OUT" to create a vision of normality. "I wanted to read a novel about an ordinary, middle-aged housewife, but there weren't any," she says. "The only ones I could find were about wives in rather well-off families or housewives fretting about their husbands' infidelities. So I decided to write one for myself. Every character in my book would have some flaw in her makeup; everyone would have something on her mind."

That's putting it mildly. "OUT" is the story of four women who work nights in a box-lunch factory in Tokyo, filling containers with fried chicken and curry sauce. One day, driven by long-simmering anger and hatred, the petite and pretty Yayoi, 34, strangles her husband, a gambler and philanderer who physically abuses her. When she comes to her senses, she turns to Masako, a smart and strong-willed co-worker, who recruits two other women to help cover up the crime. Together they cut up the body and dispose of it. Though the story line may be chilling, Kirino depicts the four women as plausible and entirely sympathetic. She also paints a brutally realistic picture of contemporary Japanese society and the despair of the low-paid workers who make it run.

When it was published in Japan in 1997, "OUT" struck a raw nerve. One talk-show host condemned Kirino for "moral laxity" and found it "appalling" that a wife would murder her husband. But her ordinary, underprivileged characters won the hearts of many women. It has since sold 600,000 copies--huge for Japan--won the country's top mystery award and been made into a TV series and a movie. Critics declared Kirino the country's first hard-boiled female writer, and her subsequent works ("Soft Cheeks" in 1999 and the recently published "Grotesque") have ...