Double Fantasy

Thirty-five-year-old playwright Natsu Takato is married to a man she once regarded as a comrade-in-arms. He quit his job to become her manager and househusband, and the two live quietly in the countryside, supporting themselves by her scriptwriting. Once life grows stable, however, her husband turns from intimate partner into controller: he monitors her daily routines, rewrites her scripts without asking, and stifles her urge to break through as a creator; intimacy between them cools, and her claims to desire are met with mockery and fault-finding. Natsu, naturally considerate and afraid of conflict, keeps giving ground, able only to watch herself dry up day by day in solitary torment. An affair of letters and emails unexpectedly strikes chords long suppressed. Natsu leaves home for Tokyo and is drawn into several relationships in succession—with a stage director, an old lover, a monk, a young actor. For the first time she confronts men's lies and control, and her own long-ignored burning desires. She believes that if she risks everything she will win freedom and autonomy, only to find love cruel, human nature fickle, and absolute self-choice bringing often nothing but deeper solitude. The title comes from John Lennon and Yoko Ono's album Double Fantasy, suggesting that even the most loving couple each harbor a different fantasy. With a clear, sharp pen, Yuka Murayama writes the many faces of flirtation, worship, control, dependence, and moth-to-flame risk, asking between carnal desire and loneliness whether a woman can truly live for herself. In 2009 the novel won the Chuo Koron Literary Prize, the Shimakiyo Romance Literature Award, and the Shibata Renzaburo Award.