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The Factory
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
20 posts | 22 read | 19 to read
The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamadaone of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan In an unnamed Japanese city, three seemingly normal and unrelated characters find work at a sprawling industrial factory. They each focus intently on their specific jobs: one studies moss, one shreds paper, and the other proofreads incomprehensible documents. Life in the factory has its own logic and momentum, and, eventually, the factory slowly expands and begins to take over everything, enveloping these poor workers. The very margins of reality seem to be dissolving: all forms of life capriciously evolve, strange creatures begin to appear After a whileit could be weeks or yearsthe workers dont even have the ability to ask themselves: where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? Told in three alternating first-person narratives, The Factory casts a vividif sometimes surrealportrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of modern life. With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, Hiroko Oyamada is one of the boldest writers of her generation.
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review
keepingupwiththepenguins
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Pickpick

Reading The Factory really took me back to my undergrad days, studying sociology and arguing about Marxism in workshops. I went to bed that night dreaming of baguettes and the bourgeoisie. I‘d recommend it to any fellow pinkos, and fans of Sayaka Murata or Yoko Ogawa. Full review: https://keepingupwiththepenguins.com/the-factory-hiroko-oyamada/

batsy Great review! This one is waiting for me on my shelves. 12mo
44 likes1 comment
blurb
DimeryRene
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Short book! Finished it on vacation. Thinking of listening to the audio right away also.

vivastory I 💙 Oyamada 1y
DimeryRene @vivastory This was my first! I liked it, but I really want to read it again on audio! 1y
22 likes2 comments
review
sarahbarnes
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Pickpick

I enjoyed this slim work of fiction almost as much as her other book, The Hole. So weird, quite funny, and overall just a very entertaining read.

32 likes3 stack adds
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rachelsbrittain
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Mehso-so

A very strange little novella about three new employees at a factory whose relationship with reality and time becomes increasingly off kilter in small ways throughout the days, weeks, or years they work there. I enjoyed it but it didn't blow me away. I am enjoying exploring more avant-garde Japanese literature though! There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job and Convenience Store Woman really got me hooked.

sebrittainclark Definitely recommend Where the Wild Ladies Are 3y
47 likes1 comment
blurb
rachelsbrittain
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Some evening reading with my best girl 🥰

review
La_Cori
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Panpan

⭐⭐
I was so mad at the end.. I wanted to know what was happening in that factory! What about all the animals?!?!
The story is non linear and it was difficult for me to understand which character and "when" in time I was reading..
The only positive side, it's a quick reading ?

(This was my #DoubleSpin for October and I'm glad I finished it in time.. I want a fresh start for November!) @TheAromaofBooks

TheAromaofBooks Great progress!!! 3y
39 likes1 comment
review
Dostoyes
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Mehso-so

This short novella follows 3 people who work at a place referred to as “the factory.” At times the book adumbrates the question of meaning in life, but only faintly. Then there is a thread discussing the animals at the factory that I would argue attempts to create a parallel to the humans. Great read, fun in ways as it zigzags time and narrators. Overall it feels unfinished.

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Exbrarian
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Mehso-so

What a strange little book. I have a hard time recommending it because I'm certain I don't understand some of it. 3 different individuals find themselves employed at different jobs within the same enormous place called the factory. Time has little meaning within the book, nobody does much work, and the factory may or may not produce anything.

39 likes1 stack add
review
Mogoeg
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Pickpick

The ‘factory‘ is a company - as big as a city & with all the amenities - or, wait, is the factory society itself? Is there a difference? 3 workers struggle to figure out the point of their seemingly (& actually) pointless jobs. A deadpan & increasingly surreal depiction of the baffling experience of contemporary corporate employment. And what is up with all these strange birds?

Weirdly, the book this reminds me most strongly of is Generation X.

Mogoeg Generation X is a very different book - but they share some themes and there is something about the flat dissociative tone that is similar. 4y
Mogoeg I enjoyed this a lot but it made me reflect on what gets translated and what doesn‘t! I think for my next Japanese book I will need to read a sweeping historical saga or something really different from the current trends! 4y
74 likes1 stack add2 comments
quote
Lexica10
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Words are such unstable things.

2 likes1 stack add
review
erzascarletbookgasm
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Pickpick

I was told this book has a distinct Kafka-vibe but I haven‘t read Kafka‘s works so I wouldn‘t know. What I can say is, it‘s disorienting as the narratives leap back and forth in time. Oyamada takes a jibe at the conglomerate working culture through the eyes of 3 employees who are given very specific, meaningless, and mundane tasks. They feel confused, numb, and isolated...lines between reality ⬇️

#Booked2020 #ThinkPink
#ReadYourWay

erzascarletbookgasm ... and illusion is blurred. Another clever skill by Oyamada is the gradual uniformity of the narrative voices as the story progresses. Characters and places change in mid paragraphs! A brilliant, disquieting, and satirical read. 4y
erzascarletbookgasm Thanks for sending me this book, Barbara! ❤️ @BarbaraBB 4y
Cinfhen Wonderful review and gorgeous photo 4y
See All 11 Comments
stretchkev Your review sums this one up nicely. Oyamada does strange so well. 4y
batsy I have this on my shelf! Great review, I'm looking forward to it. 4y
BarbaraBB It sounds real good, happy you liked it! 4y
TheSpineView 👍📚😊 4y
erzascarletbookgasm @stretchkev Thanks, I saw it made it to your top 20 favourites. I‘m going to look out for her other translated book. Have you read that? 4y
erzascarletbookgasm Thanks @batsy look forward to your thoughts when you get to it. 😊 4y
stretchkev @erzascarletbookgasm Yeah, the Hole also made my top 20 (it's cover is a field of grass), I think it's a bit better than the Factory. Different premise with a single character losing her self, but still magnificently strange and odd. It came out this October so I hope there is more translated works in the pipeline. 4y
readordierachel Nice review! This sounds great. 4y
77 likes2 stack adds11 comments
quote
erzascarletbookgasm
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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#ReadYourWay My next read, also by a Japanese author,
follows the stories of 3 new employees at a company simply known as ‘The Factory‘. Each is assigned a specific task - one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, another studies moss growing on The Factory grounds. These work-weary employees‘ lives are soon governed by their work, and The Factory becomes inescapable..

TheSpineView 👍😊📚 4y
50 likes1 stack add1 comment
quote
Bertha_Mason
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada

"I tried to let it go, but then she started dipping her pork in the ponzu. She took a bite, added more sauce and took another bite, even though it already had an umeboshi inside. “I think I like it better with bulldog sauce.” What was my brother thinking getting involved with this hideous freak?"

quote
Bertha_Mason
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada

"Now she‘s calling me Yoshiko-chan? I felt like an iguana was crawling around my insides."
Today in odd similes.

quote
Bertha_Mason
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada

"Goodbye to All Your Problems and Mine: A Guide to Mental Health Care. It was a thin B4-size booklet. Beneath its excremental title was a drawing of two smiling meatballs, basking under a rainbow."

quote
Bertha_Mason
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada

"As I opened the basement-level door, I thought I could smell birds."
Today in notable first sentences.

review
alysonimagines
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Pickpick

No matter how long employees work at the Factory, a mega-corporation in Japan, its business objectives remain as much of a mystery to them as their seemingly pointless jobs. And then there are strange animals living at the Factory that appear to depend on its human-made ecology. But the line between human and animal blurs in this delightfully bizarre, stream-of-consciousness fable of the many absurdities of corporate culture. 🖤🖤🖤

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Hooked_on_books
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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So I‘ve been reading some books in translation recently and they‘ve reminded me about something I don‘t understand. When we mention a language, it‘s just the name, i.e. Japanese. But when we refer to translation, it‘s from “the” Japanese. Why the “the?” Does anyone know?

thegirlwiththelibrarybag I‘ve wondered this as well. 5y
vivastory I think that it's just translation tradition. Earlier translations would often say "Translated from the Japanese language" 5y
Hooked_on_books @vivastory Hmmm, that makes sense. Perhaps the word “language” just got chopped off but the “the” was left behind. 5y
See All 9 Comments
Megabooks Idk, I think I‘m going to go to the Walmart and think about it. 😉😂😂 (In the 90s especially, it was common to put “the” before Walmart in my area, more among the people who congregated there in the evenings before social media.) 5y
Hooked_on_books @Megabooks And then maybe you could post about it on the Facebook. 😬 5y
ljuliel I was wondering there for a minute , when you said you were going to Walmart to ponder THE . 🤔. I go to Walmart about once a week, and never go to ponder THE. I usually ponder ice cream flavors 😊 5y
cathysaid I wonder if this is a case where “language” is an unstated yet understood term in context following “Japanese” = “Translated from the Japanese language.” 🤔 5y
8little_paws @cathysaid has it correct and this phrasing is only used in literary settings (you wouldn't see it on a legal document, for example) 5y
ravenlee I‘ve seen “translated from the original Greek” before, which could also lead to the vestigial “the” when dropping “original.” 5y
46 likes9 comments
blurb
DePaepe
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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A fun story about the absurdity of the modern workplace. Kafka would be proud.

review
ReadingEnvy
The Factory | Hiroko Oyamada
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Pickpick

Well, I hate the word Kafkaesque except in this case it really is appropriate - this slim translated novel is about three people recently hired to work at a sprawling, city-dwarfing factory, the kind that has bus routes and restaurants to support the workers (or is it to keep them there?) ⤵️

ReadingEnvy One woman shreds paper at a job she is overqualified for, one man is proofreading documents by hand and battling sleep, and one bryologist has been tasked with something both impossible and that don't seem to actually want him to accomplish.⤵️ 5y
ReadingEnvy I've always felt the series of short novels from Japan speak to one another and had to laugh when one character, after thinking negatively about their job, counters with "at least they aren't working at a convenience store." (If you know the novel CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN you will get what I'm saying.)⤵️ 5y
ReadingEnvy The concept of senseless work is heavy with dread but feels even worse in this setting. There are other things going on that are a bit confusing - animals that may or may not exist, a dangerous forest on the grounds of the factory, and the sense that in the overwhelming vastness of the factory, there are as many ways to inadvertently violate expectations in each little microcosm. The author communicates the stress of that very well. 5y
45 likes2 stack adds3 comments