25 Ostracized by Default: Anna and Kazuo in Out – Vicky Gavin

Vicky Gavin is a senior in the Professional and Technical Writing major who lives in Omaha, NE.  This paper was written as a final project for Professor Laverne Nishihara in English L382 (online) in Fall of 2021.  Dr. Nishihara noted, “Vicky was the only student who selected the challenging topic of discrimination against immigrants in Kirino’s novel. She completed sound research, her analysis was interesting and excellent, and her writing was also excellent! It was a pleasure to read the paper.”​

Ostracized by Default: Anna and Kazuo in Out

In reading Natsuo Kirino’s novel Out, various common social commentaries begin to emerge in between the lines of the novel. One of those commentaries is a showing of subtle discrimination against immigrants in Japanese society. Kirino gives a bitter condemnation to the way that immigrants are responded to in Japanese society by showing the social inequities that immigrants face, which is backed up by sociological research. The expectations that immigrants come to Japan with leave them disappointed and struggling, and the loneliness they feel from being overtly ostracized and Othered from the society they are attempting to integrate into is nearly palpable. Kirino’s novel gives insight into the struggles that people who are trying to immigrate into Japanese society face, casting an indictment on the attitudes and policies that put these people into such dire straits.

The most profound way that Kirino achieves this is by allowing the reader to gaze at Japanese society from two different immigrants’ perspectives. The book features two prominent immigrant characters: Roberto Kazuo Miyamori, a factory worker who comes from Brazil, and Anna, a hostess at a nightclub who comes from China. There are other minor characters throughout the novel, but Anna and Miyamori, who goes by Kazuo throughout the novel, give the reader an unflinching look at some of the unfortunate circumstances surrounding immigrants in Japan which can be examined through a social criticism perspective.

To begin, an examination of how Kazuo and Anna came to be immigrants is important. In looking at his background, we see that Kazuo is a Brazilian man of Japanese descent who decided to come to Japan after seeing the success story of someone he knew going to Japan and returning much wealthier (Kirino 119). This was not uncommon, since Nikkei Brazilians–Brazilians of Japanese descent–were given “long-term resident” status and “regardless of their educational backgrounds and professional experience … were directly placed on shop floors in Japan’s manufacturing sector” (Liu-Farrer 54). This unique situation allowed for people such as Kazuo, whose father had come from Japan originally, to migrate over and attempt to take part in the Japanese social and economic prosperity that was advertised. Unfortunately, Kazuo did not end up finding the wealth he was hoping for, and instead lives in what would be considered a Brazilian ghetto, deciding whether he wants to return home.

In a contrasting background story, Anna is a young Chinese woman who came over with a student visa but has abandoned her study in search of wealth. Originally, the broker who helped her get her visa had her working at a low-end club to help pay off her debts, but Mitsuyoshi Satake recruited her from that club, turning her into his biggest selling point at his own club (Kirino 188–192). Rachel Pettigrew, in a class discussion, points out that, “[Satake] has her accentuate the fact that she’s not Japanese to make her more attractive to customers.” Her worth is in the fact that she is not Japanese, and it may add to the eroticism that she was meant to be a student and is now doing the hostess work. The focus on Anna as being “not-Japanese” while ignoring anything that makes her unique or individual contributes to her objectification from a Japanese viewpoint. There is a foreign exchange between China and Japan that is not uncommon since “a dense regional social network has been established linking individuals and organizations among Japan, China, Korea, and Taiwan” (Liu-Farrer 69). Anna is one of many who take advantage of this connection. Her going to school in Japan after being a good student in China is not an unlikely scenario, and Anna’s parents in Shanghai prided themselves on earning money based on their cunning and grit which Anna ultimately emulates through her work as a hostess (Kirino 188).

Looking at how Kazuo and Anna came to Japan is only one aspect of their unfortunate existence. The promises of a better life with wealth and independence drew both Anna and Kazuo to Tokyo, but neither have achieved their goals when we meet them. Rebecca Copeland notes that these characters have been “shunted from Japan’s “economic miracle” (Copeland). This idea of the economic miracle further distances Anna and Kazuo from their ultimate goals, and Copeland’s descriptive use of “shunted” mirrors the forceful way in which Kirino has written these characters to be seen as struggling to make their way. These immigrants have been metaphorically duped by these promises. They were never intended to actually succeed in becoming a part of Japanese society. They are merely there to keep the machine of economic growth moving. As Gracia Liu-Farrer points out in the introduction of her book Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society, Japan began implementing immigrant programs in the 1980s “to stave off economic decline caused by labor shortage” (11). This was not a move by the government to begin welcoming immigrants into society at all, but instead a kind of forced tolerance. This general attitude seeps through in how Japanese characters respond to Kazuo and Anna.

In a study published in 2007 regarding general attitudes toward immigrants, long after these immigrant programs in Japan were put into place, researchers found that Japanese citizens were the least likely to feel that immigrants were taking native-born jobs when compared to the other six nations in their study (Simon and Sikich). In the context of both the exploration by Liu-Farrer and the novel Out, that could read as though these factory worker jobs and club hostess jobs are seen as jobs that should not be considered native jobs. These jobs are considered beneath Japanese citizens if immigrants are not taking jobs from natives. This is especially clear considering that Anna’s demographic, Chinese women, had a population in Japan of over 400,000 in 2018 and Kazuo’s demographic, Brazilian men, had a population of over 100,000 in 2018 (Liu-Farrer 52). Additionally, within the same study that examined whether immigrants were stealing jobs from native workers, Japanese participants held the highest percentage of strongly agree, 46, with the question pertaining to whether immigrants increase crime (Simon and Sikich). This would mean that statistically almost half of Japanese citizens believe that immigrants increase crime in Japan. These two findings together reflect that there is a sense of superiority among Japanese respondents in relation to immigrants. The Japanese do not seem to value their immigrants, and this is reflected by the various comments through the novel Out. When discussing the mysterious man who’d been assaulting workers at the bento factory, Kuniko Jonouchi’s comment was, “Everybody’s saying that the pervert is probably Brazilian,” indicating that the Brazilians are the most suspect of committing these assaults without any shred of evidence to back up the claim (Kirino 4). Even Detective Kinugasa assumes without any evidence that Satake’s Chinese employees are part of the Chinese mob or at least have connections to it (Kirino 184).

The expectations that came with both Kazuo and Anna attempting to immigrate have led to bitter disappointment in how their lives in Japan have played out. It is important to note that Kazuo and Anna’s inability to reach their immigration dreams look different from each other, since their circumstances, while similar, are not the same. By differentiating the immigrant stories in this way, Kirino raises the question as to how many other individuals have come to Japan only to have all of their lofty dreams swept out from under them.

As noted earlier, Kazuo is a Nikkei Brazilian who has been placed to work in a bento factory along with the main characters. At the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to him through the eyes of Masako Katori where she is so distracted at how foreign he looks that she doesn’t even bother to return his morning greeting (Kirino 8). This sentiment is repeated later from his perspective: “To these people, anyone who didn’t share their facial features, who didn’t speak their language, just wasn’t one of them” (Kirino 119). Not only is it established that Kazuo is making far less money than he expected, but he is also painfully aware of the fact that he is an outsider—an “Other” that cannot be accepted into the fold. He cannot afford the life he was hoping he’d be able to achieve, and he cannot make any lasting or real connections with these people that he feels are meant to be his father’s people. He is effectively socially and economically ostracized from Japanese society, and there is very little he can do to change it because the Japanese place more emphasis on looks than anything else (Kirino 120).

Anna’s story turns out a little differently from Kazuo’s, however. Her initial disappointment when coming to Japan stems from a similar lack of connection that Kazuo faces, and she is doing low-level work to deal with her debt when she first comes to Tokyo. Her student visa was a farce, and she had never intended to go to school in Japan (Kirino 187). The student visa was a means to an end. It was her way to get into the country and begin working to build her life of prosperity from it. However, in a memory of riding the national railroad, she recalls just how alone she felt: “She felt a stab of real loneliness, the loneliness of a traveler adrift in a foreign country. Though the faces and voices resembled her own, she was alone in a world where no one knew her” (Kirino 187). Satake, a Japanese self-described pimp, is responsible for giving her the comfortable economic life she has grown accustomed to by the time we meet her in the novel, but after she has left his side, he notes that her time working as she is has almost run out and she won’t last more than six months or so (Kirino 368). Anna is in the position of eventual ruin because the profession she is in has what is essentially an age limit. Her ethnicity of being Chinese helps extend this time due to the exoticism of it, but she still only has a limited amount of time before she will either have to change her life or start “a downward spiral of progressively sleazier workplaces” (Seaman). Anna’s days of prosperity are numbered, and her ultimate truth is that she can’t succeed long-term in the promised economic paradise that is Tokyo. She is an outsider, and she doesn’t have any right to claim that economic prosperity.

The ultimate end for both characters is a finite existence within Japanese society. Their stories differ in some very significant ways to highlight the different perspectives they represent. Where Kazuo lives in a ghetto eking out a meager existence, Anna has a period of prosperity and comfort. However, due to their status as immigrants and their limited usefulness in Japanese society—in his case, a willing menial worker; in her case, an objectified hostess worker—they are both racing toward a poverty-stricken end. Since they are not full members of Japanese society and are Othered in this way, their prosperous dreams wither. As a result of this default separation from Japanese society, both Anna and Kazuo suffer from a kind of loneliness that is specifically because of their immigrant status. Kazuo is shunned for his foreign looks, and Anna is objectified because of hers. In both cases, they are displaced and placed firmly into the “Other” category for the Japanese characters. The loneliness that follows them makes them desperate for attention, and they both cling to Japanese characters whom they consider their saviors.

In Kazuo’s case, he becomes desperate for companionship and attempts to sexually assault Masako on her way to work. When Masako promises not to report him and follows through on that promise, he develops an infatuation for her partially stemming from his loneliness. His sudden attachment to her spurs him on to learn Japanese and try harder to communicate with the Japanese characters in the novel, especially Masako. Kirino herself even comes in with the omniscient narrator to comment on his affections: “It never occurred to him that his feelings might be nothing more than an attempt to find some comfort in the inhospitable country his father had come from” (Kirino 216). Even the author cannot resist pointing out that Kazuo’s self-professed love for Masako is a product of his isolation. When he finds the moment, he tells Masako of his feelings, but she rejects him completely, breaking his heart (Kirino 223). His ability to accept her rejection and move on from it, even proving an ally to her later in the novel, speaks to his character which makes his total isolation that much more painful, as it becomes increasingly clear that he is a strong and reliable man with a sense of honor that may have ultimately fit in very well with Japanese society, had he only been given the chance.

Like Kazuo’s feelings for Masako, Anna falls into deep affection with Satake, seeing him as her savior. Satake found her on the streets, brought her into his business, and saved her from a low-class life. She sees him as a hero, and she has brought herself so far as to claim that she is in love with him. Satake was a wounded man, emotionally, and Anna daydreamed about how she would rescue him from his anguished past (Kirino 195). Her desires come from a need to be needed, and not just because she’s beautiful. Unfortunately, Anna is brought out of her reverie as her attempts to garner his undivided affection and even jealousy do nothing to rouse the desired response from Satake. She uses a man at the pool to make him jealous and is broken-hearted when Satake doesn’t seem to care that the man is flirting with her in front of him. Satake makes no claim to Anna romantically, and she is crestfallen. She attempts once more by skipping work to sleep with the same man, forcing Satake to come and confront her. This would have him catch her in the act, but his response is very simply, “I don’t mind if you fool around … as long as it doesn’t get in the way of work or go on too long” (Kirino 195). Anna is completely devastated by his response, and when she is confronted with his past, she reflects on how she has been treated similarly to her dog—a pet and nothing more (Kirino 198). This realization is heartbreaking from the readers’ point of view since we had already known that he felt this way about her. He made it clear during his narrative sections of the book that he viewed her, and any other woman, in this way. Her affections fall on deaf ears, and there was no other outcome for this situation. Just like her employment, the tragedy is not so much that he feels no romantic feelings toward her, it’s that she didn’t see it coming.

This sense of attachment that both of the characters develop reflects their overall loneliness and feelings of abandonment in their immigrant status. Kazuo is desperate for camaraderie and human interaction, so he latches onto Masako who shows him the faintest glimmer of being a good person. Anna feels she has been saved and concocts a romantic fantasy around herself and Satake, leading her to emotional destruction when she discovers that all it could have ever been was fantasy. This loneliness is indicative of the immigrants being pushed to the outskirts of society and ignored or forgotten.

The economic disappointment and social isolation combined with general attitudes towards immigrants leads to Natsuo Kirino’s representatives—Kazuo and Anna—being ostracized and ultimately abandoned. The work of sociologists examining the immigrant status in Japan has a more personalized echo through Kirino’s writing, and the reader is able to experience the reality of the immigrants’ plight. The Japanese characters within Out either use the immigrants as much as they can get away with, as is the case with Anna, or they default to a suspicious view of the immigrants and attempt to avoid the population entirely, as is the case with Kazuo and the other Nikkei Brazilians. There is no happily ever after for these characters, and Kirino’s indictment of the ostracized Other status for immigrants into Japan shows through in her writing.

Works Cited

Copeland, Rebecca. “Cracks in Reality: Kirino Natsuo and the Exploration of Contemporary Japan.” Modern Japanese Literature, edited by Frank Jacob, Salem Press, a division of EBSCO Information Services, Inc. Grey House Publishing, 2017.

Kirino, Natsuo, and Stephen Snyder. Out. 1st Vintage International ed, Vintage International, 2005.

Liu-Farrer, Gracia. Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-Nationalist Society. Cornell University Press, 2020.

Seaman, Amanda. “Inside OUT: Space, Gender, and Power in Kirino Natsuo.” Japanese Language and Literature, vol. 40, no. 2, Oct. 2006, pp. 197–217.

Simon, Rita J., and Keri W. Sikich. “Public Attitudes toward Immigrants and Immigration Polices across Seven Nations.” The International Migration Review, vol. 41, no. 4, [Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc., Wiley], 2007, pp. 956–62. JSTOR.