Stories by Fujino Kaori: Fujino Kaori: Fear in the Form

Fujino Kaori was awarded the Akutagawa Prize in 2013 for her novella Nails and Eyes (Tsume to me), and in the publicity and press that followed, she was frequently referred to as a writer of literary horror. In the judges’ remarks in the September 2013 issue of the journal Bungei shunjū, Ogawa Yōko refers to Nails and Eyes as “frightening” (398), while Miyamoto Teru and Yamada Eimi both used the word “horror” in discussing the work (402, 405). Fujino (2017d) has claimed not to understand where this impression of her work as horror fiction could possibly have come from, but with tongue firmly in cheek. Her previous works had been of a kind: In her Kafkaesque novella The Greedy Bird (Iyashii tori, 2008), a pet cockatiel grows to gargantuan size. In Negative Space (Patorone, literally named for the cartridge that holds a spool of 35mm photography film, 2012), the protagonist finds herself in a mental fog that isolates her from her sister, her friends, and reality itself. Many of Fujino’s stories are bloody; people are killed by various creatures and contraptions, and commit random acts of violence without themselves knowing why they are doing it. Her knowledge of horror cinema is encyclopedic; she draws from a deep well of images and devices.