Snakes and Earrings

Recently,I read a book titled“Snakes and Earrings”

written by a Japanese young woman named Hitomi Kanehara.

She wrote the novel when she was 21.

In 2003, the novel won her the Akutagawa Prize,

one of the most prestigious literary awards in Japan.

It is really difficult to explain the story in English…

But let me try.

The 17-years-old heroine in this story is called Lui-“for Louis Vitton”,She says.

One day, she met a guy named Ama who has so many piercing holes on his face and red strange hair,

also he has split tongue like snakes.

Lui is fascinated it and she longs to split her tongue.

And she also wants to tattoo in her back.

She met the other guy named Shiba who is a tattooist,also has a lot of piercings on his face.

She has sex on the side with him,in exchange for design he’s working on her back.

Lui can feel “living”,only when she feels pain.

The guy named Shiba is a sadist and he wants to kill the parson who he loves.

The other guy named Ama loves Lui so much,

Even she doesn’t know she loves him or just his tongue.

One day,when she was going out with Ama and friend,

bad guys tried to touch her and do some stupied thing to her,

Ama got so angry and hit the guy again and again.

At the last,Ama put his hand in the guys mouth and got 2 teeth of him.

Lui got angry at Ama and asked “Why did you do that?” because somebody called a police

and siren of police car was almost there but he was continuing hitting the guy.

Ama said 2 teeth is proof of love to Lui and he couldn’t control himself at the time.

Lui can’t blame him anymore because she knows Ama’s love to her is so honest.

The days passed so peaceful,but one day when she read a new paper,she found the article

about the case of murder which happened at the place Ama hit the guy.

She noticed that the guy that Ama hit was dead so Ama became a murder and police are searching him,

even she doesn’t want to believe it.

Unfortunately,the guy’s party remembered Ama’s red hair and piercing face.

She didn’t tell Ama about the article and tried to change his hair color as soon as passable.

The story’s progress is marked by the in creasing girth of stud the Lui uses to stretch her pierced tongue.

When it reaches 9.5mm,the remaining strip of flesh will be tied with dental floss

then sliced with a razor blade.

Ama wasn’t caught so long time,so Lui thought Ama’ll never be caught and the case is over.

But one day,Ama didn’t come back from his part time job.

He always wants to come back as soon as passible and he calls her even he will be late only 30 min.

She is disturbed about him and asked to Shiba about him.

She want to apply to the police for him,but she find that she even doesn’t know Ama’s real name.

She is in blank dejection,she doesn’t know about him at all.

Few days later,Ama was found dead.

Somebody raped him and killed him.

First,she thought somebady who is in the party with the guy Ama killed did,

but she noticed,if they killed him thay would try to hide the body.

The way of killing Ama was not nomal morder.

Clearly,somebody who is deep sadist did.

She found a incense stick which was found the murder site in Shiba’s shop.

She doesn’t want to think that Shiba killed Ama,

but she vaguely thinks so.

There is no reasen to split her tongue anymore,Ama is not here,

so she gave up to make it.

She finally realized that maybe she loved Ama.

But she didn’t ask Shiba that he killed Ama or not,

because she knows that killing the person is the way to love the person for Shiba.

I’m so sorry about my bad explanation,

and also I wrote some of my readings in it.

If you interested in the story,it is translated in English.

Please read it.

I never think want to kill somebody who I love,

but I know that there is a lot of way to love.

And it is impassible to understand all of them