In her explosive debut novel “Hunchback,” Saou Ichikawa delivers a narrative as twisted and unapologetic as her protagonist’s spine. This provocative book, which earned Ichikawa the prestigious Akutagawa Prize (making her the first author with a physical disability to receive this honor), has rocked Japan’s literary establishment with its raw portrayal of disability, sexuality, and the human desire for autonomy.
The novel introduces us to Shaka Izawa, a 40-something woman with myotubular myopathy who lives in a care facility called Ingleside. Confined mostly to her room with a ventilator to help her breathe through a tracheostomy tube, Shaka’s physical world is limited, but her mind roams freely through digital spaces where she crafts erotic stories, tweets provocative thoughts, and creates alternate personas. When she offers an enormous sum of money to her male nurse for a sperm donation, it sets in motion a disturbing transaction that forces both characters—and readers—to confront uncomfortable truths about power, desire, and what it means to be “normal.”
Narrative Architecture: Form Follows Dysfunction
Saou Ichikawa constructs “Hunchback” with remarkable formal ingenuity. The novel alternates between Shaka’s first-person narrative and sections that appear to be her fictional creations—stories about sex workers, swingers’ clubs, and sexual encounters. These shifts create a disorienting effect, deliberately blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. By the end, we’re left questioning which parts of Shaka’s life are “real” and which are fabrications.
This structural choice mirrors Shaka’s fractured existence. Just as her S-shaped spine dictates how she navigates physical space (she can only get out of bed from the left side, can only see half of her refrigerator’s contents), the narrative itself bends and twists, forcing readers to reorient themselves repeatedly. The effect is discomfiting but powerful—we experience a fraction of the disorientation Shaka lives with daily.
Ichikawa’s prose is unflinching and precise. Through translator Polly Barton’s skillful work, English readers experience the clinical detachment with which Shaka describes her body’s functions and dysfunctions. The detailed passages about suctioning mucus from her tracheostomy tube are as meticulous as the erotic stories Shaka crafts. This juxtaposition creates a jarring cognitive dissonance that serves the novel’s themes well.
Body Politics and Reproductive Rights
The central conflict of “Hunchback” by Saou Ichikawa revolves around Shaka’s proclaimed desire to become pregnant specifically to have an abortion—a desire she frames as wanting to experience what “normal” women experience. This provocative premise forces readers to confront difficult questions about reproductive rights, disability, and bodily autonomy.
Ichikawa references important historical contexts through Shaka’s academic research, including feminist disability activist Tomoko Yonezu’s protest against abortion laws that seemed to target disabled fetuses. The novel doesn’t provide easy answers to these complex ethical questions, instead letting them hang uncomfortably in the narrative air.
Some of the novel’s most compelling passages explore Shaka’s relationship with physical books—objects she simultaneously craves and resents:
“I loathed the exclusionary machismo of book culture that demanded that its participants meet these five criteria of able-bodiedness. I loathed, too, the ignorant arrogance of all those self-professed book-lovers so oblivious to their privilege.”
These moments highlight how ordinary objects and activities can become sites of exclusion for disabled bodies—a reality rarely explored in literature with such unsparing clarity.
Strengths and Shortcomings
Where “Hunchback” Excels:
- Unflinching perspective – Ichikawa never softens her protagonist’s edges or makes her conventionally sympathetic, which feels refreshingly honest
- Formal innovation – The novel’s structure brilliantly reinforces its themes
- Body writing – Few novels depict disabled bodies with such clinical precision and without sentimentality
- Intellectual depth – The text engages with complex ideas about disability theory, feminist thought, and reproductive rights
Where It Falls Short:
- Character development – Secondary characters like Tanaka remain somewhat flat, serving primarily as foils for Shaka
- Pacing issues – The middle section of the novel occasionally drags, with repetitive passages about Shaka’s daily routines
- Unresolved threads – Several narrative strands are introduced but never fully developed, including Shaka’s relationship with her deceased parents
- Occasional heavy-handedness – Some of the thematic material feels overly explicit rather than organically integrated
Confronting Difficult Emotions
What makes “Hunchback” by Saou Ichikawa particularly challenging is its willingness to wade into emotional territories that most fiction avoids. Shaka experiences resentment, bitterness, and spite—emotions typically denied to disabled characters in literature, who are often portrayed as either inspirational figures or objects of pity. Ichikawa allows her protagonist to be fully human in her nastiness, her pettiness, and her complicated sexuality.
The sexual transaction between Shaka and Tanaka is portrayed without romance or redemption. It’s an ugly encounter driven by mutual resentment and power dynamics. Shaka uses her wealth to purchase what she wants from a man who clearly detests her but needs her money. The ensuing complications—Shaka contracts aspiration pneumonia after choking on Tanaka’s semen—serve as a brutal metaphor for how their interaction poisons them both.
This unflinching portrayal may alienate readers looking for uplift or easy moral lessons. Yet it’s precisely this refusal to conform to expectations that gives “Hunchback” its formidable power.
A Milestone in Disability Literature
As Saou Ichikawa’s first novel and the first Akutagawa Prize winner by an author with a physical disability, “Hunchback” represents an important milestone in Japanese literature. Without resorting to autobiography (though Ichikawa shares some medical conditions with her protagonist), the author has created a work that expands our understanding of what disability literature can be.
Unlike Western disability narratives that often emphasize overcoming obstacles or finding community, “Hunchback” presents disability as an ongoing negotiation with a world designed for different bodies. Shaka doesn’t triumph over her condition or find acceptance—she simply continues to exist in her complex, contradictory humanity.
Final Assessment
“Hunchback” by Saou Ichikawa is not an easy read, either in content or form. Its protagonist is difficult to like, its scenarios often disturbing, and its conclusion offers little catharsis. Yet in its unflinching examination of a disabled woman’s interior life—including her sexual desires, her intellectual pursuits, and her darkest thoughts—it accomplishes something rare in contemporary fiction.
With this debut, Ichikawa establishes herself as a bold new voice in Japanese literature. Though the novel has flaws, particularly in pacing and character development, its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses. “Hunchback” deserves attention not merely as a curiosity or for its boundary-pushing content, but as a work of significant literary merit that forces readers to reconsider their assumptions about disability, personhood, and the human body.
Readers who appreciate challenging, thought-provoking literature like Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” or Sayaka Murata’s “Convenience Store Woman” will find much to admire in Ichikawa’s unforgettable debut. Like those works, “Hunchback” uses an unconventional protagonist to illuminate the constraints of conventional society. Though it doesn’t always make for comfortable reading, it certainly makes for compelling literature.
