In 2003, at the age of 20, Hitomi Kanehara made her shocking debut by winning the Subaru Literary Award and the Akutagawa Award for her novel “Snakes and Earrings”. She continued to win numerous prizes for her novels, which reflect the “difficulties of life” she has been facing, and her recent book, “Let’s Survive the Changing World Together,” was published with the message “Let’s Survive the Changing World Together. YABUNONAKA” was published with the message, “Let’s survive the ever-changing world together. As Ms. Kanehara entered her 40s, she chose divorce as the first step. We asked him about the view he sees now in his 40s after dissolving his 20-year marriage.
I immediately took the step into my 40s, saying, “I have to get divorced now. ……
In my 40s, I divorced my spouse whom I had been married to for about 20 years. I had wanted to get a divorce for a rather long time, but it had been a long time since we were married, and I was not ready to take the next step. But to be honest, I had reached my limit. I often heard about the experiences of people who had lived apart for long periods of time and thought, “If I don’t get divorced now, ten or twenty years will go by like this ……” “I may die as his wife before long. I thought that would be too unwilling, so I began serious negotiations. After the divorce, I am very happy. My life and feelings have changed a lot. For example, the scenery at the dinner table has changed. Subconsciously, I was trying to take care of my partner in a certain way and serve what he/she liked. Now, I feel that I can genuinely enjoy what I like and what I want to cook. I see this change not only at the dinner table, but also in the way I dress, the books I read, the tableware, the furniture, and even the people I socialize with.
I am comfortable with the “loose friendship” with my female friends that I have developed as I have gotten older.
I don’t know if this is related to my divorce, but recently I have been making more female friends. When I was younger, I didn’t “hang out” with friends very much, and I was very particular about who I didn’t like or didn’t want to talk to. Basically, I had a hard time socializing with people. But lately, strangely enough, I enjoy being with anyone. Partly because I have come to enjoy people who are different from myself, and partly because I am now in my 40s and people around me have become less self-conscious. I have become less and less particular about how I am, and I have come to think of it as, “Well, let’s all just live long and write lots of novels together. (Laughs.) A kind of relaxed friendship began to develop. When you are a teenager, you tend to compete with other teenagers for friends, as if you want them to be friends only with you. I no longer feel that way, and I have come to seriously care about the other person’s body, saying, “I don’t care if everyone is healthy. With such female friends, my novels are also a good time for drinks. In my recent book “YABUNONAKA,” there are five characters ranging in age, gender, and personality, from high school students to people in their 50s, and they all seem to feel that there is a part of them that fits their own nature, such as “I have elements of Kido who was accused of sexual harassment” or “By the way, 00-san said I am Kazuya. I’m sure it’s Gosho,” and so on.