• ISBN: 978 0 7206 1274 5
• Fiction
• Paperback
• £11.95
• Available

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The Hundred–Yen Singer

Naomi Suenaga

Translated from the Japanese by Tom Gill

Rinka Kazuki is an enka singer – she sings traditional ballads in Tokyo countryside retreats and old folks' homes for hundred-yen coins. She has high ambitions: a record contract, a loving relationship, to finally get rid of her trundle trolley. Following her through the suburbs of Tokyo as she tries to avoid the pitfalls of her profession you’ll find her an insightful commentator, one of the most engaging characters in Japanese fiction today and discover why this entertaining and perceptive novel has been a hit in Japan.

Praise for The Hundred Yen Singer:

‘In UK bookstores, if you pick up a novel about a thirty-something woman dreaming of career fulfilment and fretting about her relationship with a married man, chances are you're holding a one-plot-fits-all volume of chick lit. In Japan, you might be lucky enough to find yourself with Naomi Suenaga's The Hundred-Yen Singer, a novel that takes chick lit and fashions it into something mischievous and beguiling.Towards the story's end, Rinka Kazuki, the 32-going-on-20 singer of the title, decides she needs a new stage kimono. She buys metres of black lace and runs up an unorthodox one - almost see-through - that drives her audience wild. Similarly, Suenaga takes the most unfashionable of Japan's art forms - emotive enka folk-song - and dresses it in a tale that's an unexpected treat. Unexpected, because many young Japanese female novelists get pigeonholed into writing about the sleazier side of Japan's "entertainment" industry. Nothing could be further from those bleak narratives than Suenaga's joie de vivre. Rinka is all heart - a heart firmly pinned to the flapping kimono sleeve in which she hides her tips. She's also a deliciously mordant commentator on her curious world. Chick lit is about achieving the dream: that perfect fiancé, that perfect job. The Hundred-Yen Singer is part of a Japanese project that commissions translations and offers them to international publishers. In the UK it was picked up by independent Peter Owen, who should be applauded. In Rinka's world, they'd receive a small token of appreciation, too - a hundred-yen coin offered between the tips of disposable chopsticks.’ – Independent

‘The Japanese entertainment world described in Naomi Suenaga's novel is about as far removed from Memoirs of a Geisha as could be imagined. Rinka Kazuki is condemned to scraping a living performing traditional Japanese ballads (enka) in bathhouses and other sleazy venues, scrabbling for hundred-yen tips to make ends meet. Her professional life is built on illusion but the crushing realities of every day life; unscrupulous agents, jealous rivals, an unsupportive married lover and lascivous would be patrons, often threaten to sink her. Suenaga's own experiences of the business lend snap and crackle to this tale of feisty perseverence and she conjures some deftly drawn and amusing characters from this twilit world, intoxicated by the promise of stardom’ – Metro

NAOMI SUENAGA published her first novel in 1996 after a varied career that included spells as a cartoonist’s secretary, a hostess, and an enka singer. Entitled Bara No Onigokko (Roses Playing Tag), it won a literary prize and was followed by several more novels, including Ukarezakura (Floating Cherry Blossom), and Bonno Haitatsunin (The Troubled Delivery Man).