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Yukimi Ogawa's Like Smoke, Like Light
Jun. 22nd, 2023 01:55 pmThis week Mike Allen's Mythic Delirium Press published Like Smoke, Like Light, a collection of short stories by Yukimi Ogawa. Yukimi Ogawa is remarkable: she lives in Tokyo and doesn't feel hugely confident speaking English, but she writes in English, and her stories are imaginative, surprising, and memorable. She's been published in Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and, back in the day, Mythic Delirium--among others.
There are more or less three types of stories. First, there are yōkai tales, that is, stories in which traditional Japanese monsters or creepy beings are main characters. Although the yōkai comes from folklore, the stories Yukimi puts them in are completely new. In talking about the yōkai tales with Mike Allen, she says, "I try to not be too inventive about yokai because they are traditional to our culture, but not be restricted by the folklore too much either. The balance is important, but difficult to keep!" (The rest of the interview is here.)
Second, there are her tales set on an unnamed island where people's skins are patterned and colored in unusual ways. Several of these stories feature Kikiro, a member of the stigmatized underclass of people born without dramatic coloring or a pattern. She's something of a detective, and her investigations reveal things about the society (but also about personal relationships). All the colorful-island stories touch on issues of status, exploitation, discrimination, dignity, trust, and loyalty.
And then there are some stories that don't fall into either of those two categories. In one, a girl's opal blood can be used as a narcotic--or to heal people. In another a woman steals beautiful parts of other people's anatomies to keep herself attractive, always making sure to leave them with something in return, and in another, a caretaking AI gets increasingly fed up with human idiosyncrasies.
Here's what I said at the end of my introduction:
Needless to say, I recommend the collection! You can find ways to buy it at the bottom of the page here.
There are more or less three types of stories. First, there are yōkai tales, that is, stories in which traditional Japanese monsters or creepy beings are main characters. Although the yōkai comes from folklore, the stories Yukimi puts them in are completely new. In talking about the yōkai tales with Mike Allen, she says, "I try to not be too inventive about yokai because they are traditional to our culture, but not be restricted by the folklore too much either. The balance is important, but difficult to keep!" (The rest of the interview is here.)
Second, there are her tales set on an unnamed island where people's skins are patterned and colored in unusual ways. Several of these stories feature Kikiro, a member of the stigmatized underclass of people born without dramatic coloring or a pattern. She's something of a detective, and her investigations reveal things about the society (but also about personal relationships). All the colorful-island stories touch on issues of status, exploitation, discrimination, dignity, trust, and loyalty.
And then there are some stories that don't fall into either of those two categories. In one, a girl's opal blood can be used as a narcotic--or to heal people. In another a woman steals beautiful parts of other people's anatomies to keep herself attractive, always making sure to leave them with something in return, and in another, a caretaking AI gets increasingly fed up with human idiosyncrasies.
Here's what I said at the end of my introduction:
Good science fiction and fantasy stories remind us that other worlds are possible—better ones … and worse ones. They give us space and time to think about how we really feel about tricky questions—like what makes a monster. Yukimi shows us over and over that true monstrosity has nothing to do with appearance and everything to do with one’s treatment of others. Her stories are full of monsters—but the monsters are not skeletons, severed heads, or creatures with eyes on their arms. Similarly, she presents us with a beautiful palette of types of love and family: we have only to accept them in the forms they choose to wear.
Needless to say, I recommend the collection! You can find ways to buy it at the bottom of the page here.
