My Year of Meats

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Bunny’s elderly husband, who proposed to Bunny during a lap dance; is clearly smitten with his young, vivacious wife. Gale

Jane is my extroverted self and our exterior identities and experiences of the world have much in common. But Akiko is my little introvert. I suspect I was more like her when I was younger and less able to recognize or harness my strength, and often turned it against myself as a result. In her impressive debut novel My Year of Meats, Ozeki follows American factory farming shortcuts and deregulation to their international - and individual - implications. The Union of Concerned Scientists. Hurricanes and climate change. Union of Concerned Scientists: Science for a Healthy Planet and Safer World. Accessed 9 Oct 2019, https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/impacts/hurricanes-and-climate-change.htmlSo far, I’ve mentioned everything from the discovery of one’s sexuality to cross-cultural disconnect. What connects all of these concepts in My Year of Meats?Takagi-Little and Ueno’s parallel pregnancies and previous struggle with infertility. All of the issues discussed in the novel culminate in the protagonists’ experiences with reproduction, which in turn connects with nonhuman animals’ experience with it. Jane sees herself as a "documentarian" and her aspiration is, on one hand, to record the times she lives in like the Japanese writer Shōnagon, and on the other to inspire someone by the results of her work. I don’t know what took me so long to read another novel by Ruth Ozeki after A Tale for the Time Being, one of my favorite books of 2013. This is nearly as fresh, vibrant and strange. Set in 1991, it focuses on the making of a Japanese documentary series, My American Wife, sponsored by a beef marketing firm. Japanese American filmmaker Jane Takagi-Little is tasked with finding all-American families and capturing their daily lives – and best meat recipes. The traditional values and virtues of her two countries are in stark contrast, as are Main Street/Ye Olde America and the burgeoning Walmart culture.

The story also sheds light on the link between diet and fertility, particularly in the case of the “mad cow disease” or BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy) of the 90’s, whose outbreak effected meat consumption in the UK, US and Japan. During the late 80’s, a case of BSE was confirmed in the UK, a new disease found in cattle. Fear that this could be transmitted to humans in the form of Vcjd (a slow-degenerative disease), consumption of specific offal was banned and 3.7 million cattle were destroyed. Despite these precautions, human cases were eventually identified and found to be the causes of death. Eventually, media attention dissipated and the supposed threat of the disease disappeared. Now, over two decades later, can we confirm that our attention to meat consumption has changed?

My Year of Meats dips into a wide variety of serious issues: the role of women in America and Japan, stereotypes, racism, relationships, artistic freedom, and, of course, the meat industry. Were you concerned that it would become a “novel of causes,” or that the evils being exposed would overpower the characters?

I really enjoyed My Year of Meats. When a book sets out to be challenging but still remains a form of intelligent discourse, full of colourful wit and empathy, what's not to like? And when the book does all of this without trying to manipulate an opinion or drawing at your hear strings to evoke a response - yes, looking at you here J.S. Froer - perfect! Our exposure to the media has reached a fever pitch. Increasingly, we are bombarded by instant information via television, print, radio, and the Internet. Is this a positive development? What is your own “screen” for judging information received in the media? Has your reading of My Year of Meats suggested any new possibilities for your own relationship with media sources? Ozeki clearly points out in the author's note that this is a work of fiction, but it feels very much like the truth, complete with bibliography and footnotes. Issues of hormones, fertility, abuse, agriculture and culture all come to the forefront, but Ozeki resists the urge to preach.Parallel to Jane's story is the life of Akiko Ueno, a former manga artist who specialized in horror scenes and is reluctantly married to Joichi "John" Ueno, who works for BEEF-EX. John cares only that Akiko has a baby and forces her to watch My American Wife and cook the recipes, believing that it will allow her to conceive. However, as Akiko's independence and sense of self grows from watching the show and cooking for John, her relationship with John becomes violent. Jane storyline runs concurrent to that of another Japanese woman, a former horror mangaka, Ueno Akiko. Akiko is unhappily married to Ueno “ John” Joichi, the Japanese director of “ My American Wife!” John is an abusive husband who is obsessed with Akiko conceiving. Thinking that somehow by cooking the recipes featured in the show Akiko would be able to bear children he forces her to watch and evaluate episode after episode of “ My American Wife!” demanding that she have the highlighted viand prepared for him by the time he gets home. In the process of watching the show however, Akiko’s sense of self grows and with it a growing sense of independence, straining the already troubled relationship between her and John. Chapter 2 begins with this quote from The Pillow Book: “When I make myself imagine what it is like to be one of those women who live at home, faithfully serving their husbands, women who have not a single exciting prospect in life yet who believe they are happy, I am filled with scorn.” Akiko and Jane, as well as the women featured on My American Wife!, reflect the different roles women play both in Japan and within America. Of all of the women featured in the novel, with whom did you most identify? Were there any that you upheld as models for what women should aspire to be? As the story progresses, Jane manages to turn the show into a work of investigative journalism rather than light entertainment and discovers some aspects of the meat industry that she feels need to be made public - and if this happens in a program paid for by the meat industry even better!