Ichikawa got the 2023 Akutagawa prize for Hunchback. Like previous year’s winners, this is a story of a woman on the fringe. The author is obnoxiously introduced as "the first author with a disability to receive" the prize (and once again, I wonder what is the spin of autofiction here).

Disabled femcel empties her resentment towards the non-disabled world and mixes it with overindulgent self-belittling sandwiched between pieces of her erotic fiction (a way to make some money she doesn't need).

She meets an alleged incel (a self described "beta male") among her caretakers who found her secret SoMe account where she expressed her bitterness in zingers such as "My ultimate dream is to get pregnant and have an abortion, just like a normal woman.", "I want to do the job in swingers’ clubs where you get to scatter condoms from the ceiling." or "I stopped being able to walk before they introduced automated ticket barriers, so I’ve only ever used the kind with a guy punching holes in your ticket.".

She sees life through two filters: her body, which removes her far from reality, and the pop-porn culture she consumes and produces, which adds another layer.

His unzipped trousers and boxers came off at the same time, and suddenly his genitals drooped there right in front of me, utterly uncensored, crowned by a bush of hair. Veiled in sweat after his day’s work, they weren’t all that different from those I’d seen in the gang rape scenes from the erotic manga that filled up my Kindle library.
I had the urge to cut a long strip of flavored nori to size and stick it on top, to serve as the censoring black bar that I was used to.

It tries hard, with sometimes good effect (the workings of the broken body are as laborious and mechanical as the sexual body; the relationship between body, sex and money).

Bequeathed all this money by my parents, I had no need to allow my broken body to be ground down so as to enter society. Neither my heart, nor my skin, nor my mucus membranes had ever experienced friction with others.
Instead of tormenting myself about the chastity of my existence, I selected one of the futures I’d dreamed up and tweeted it:
In another life, I’d like to work as a high-class prostitute.
I had experienced what it was like to be a woman whose money had distanced her from friction; I wanted to become a woman who earned money through that friction.

Regrettably, everything is briefly touched on (the book doesn't reach a hundred pages).

I don't know what to think of it: there were some interesting (and pretty current) things, but it remains superficial, and I took no pleasure reading it. I am not sold on the ending pointing towards some sort of sorority in misery beyond abled/disabled.

Hunchback

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