MixedAstraBuilt into the form of the diary is a perverse kind of intimacy, which sometimes turns the reader not into a confidant but a voyeur. Yagi makes use of this doubled anxiety — of self-disclosure, but also the possibility of being read, and therefore the possibility of being found out as a fraud — to draw attention to how much the pregnant woman is scrutinized in everyday life ... for a book that is ostensibly about reproduction, there is a surprising lack of sex, and mentions of Shibata’s past lovers are kept to a minimum. Yagi’s omissions here further compound the reader’s sense of Shibata’s isolation, while also granting the reader the satisfaction of reading a narrative that deliberately breaks the linkage between sex and reproduction, and therefore the insidious mythos of biological destiny that prescribes coupling up ... Subsumed by Shibata’s unsteady psychological state, Diary of a Void can only offer at best an incomplete critique of the social conditions in which Shibata finds herself — satire gives way to psychologism. By the end of the novel, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the void is the quotidian cruelty of misogyny and social atomization, and not simply Shibata’s disaffected longing for something — anything — different ... Even with injections of the surreal, the book finds itself within a cohort of neo-naturalist international literature that seeks to represent the dead ends of modern living, depicting a play-by-play of the logic of capitalism unfolding within the interior lives of stricken individuals. This, however, does not a critique make. The coy, deflationary narration only ends up sapping the conclusion of its horror and pathos ... Every piece of literature contains within itself a working theory of the capacity for personal evolution, be it in the form of precepts about the immutability of human nature or the requisite historical or social conditions for change. What makes a piece of literature great is its ability to transcend those precepts and arrive at a clearer conception of society’s contours. Diary of a Void ultimately sticks with its premise until the bitter end, hewing so closely to Shibata’s isolation that it lacks insight into broader social life. The book depicts sexual harassment and paternalism in unsparing detail — capturing the general atmospheric pressure of male incompetence — but it is simply not within the remit of Shibata’s perspective to build up any theory for why things happen to her. The only hint Emi Yagi offers of a more ambitious project is in her depiction of the hypnotic paper coring machinery at the factory Shibata visits every now and then for work.
