Name: The Shooting Gallery & Other Stories
ISBN: 9780811213561

Yūko Tsushima

Includes eight stories about single women coping with motherhood, jealousy, and the war between responsibility and entrapment

The Shooting Gallery & Other Stories

ikkychan

The Shooting Gallery &amp; Other Stories
 by Yuko Tsushima brings together eight literary gems, each one striking in how it portrays women who, with a leveled gaze on their often bitter realities, still manage to take a step forward and continue living. There is no illusion of grandeur here, no room for false impressions or idle pondering. Tsushima’s women are sober and clearheaded, fully aware of the lives they lead. One of the strongest threads running through these stories is Tsushima’s unflinching portrayal of single mothers and the conflicted reality of maternity. This theme is the beating heart of the collection. Rather than offering a single, monolithic image, Tsushima dissects motherhood as a constant tension: love entangled with resentment, duty clashing with the desire for selfhood, and societal judgment grinding against a fragile autonomy. Her mothers are not just caretakers but also economic providers, homemakers, and emotional anchors—roles that stack on top of one another until they crush the self. Yet Tsushima doesn’t dramatize this as tragedy; instead, she reveals it as a slow, grinding exhaustion. In 
 “The Shooting Gallery,”
 the protagonist is hemmed in not by abstract pressures but by relentless, physical reminders of her duties: “cracker crumbs, plastic blocks, empty juice cans, underwear and socks… the sinkful of dirty dishes, the wash hanging from the ceiling.” Her mental space is equally crowded: “the sound of the TV, the younger child’s crying, her own voice talking at the office.” This overwhelming fatigue drains her until she feels like a “desiccated old sponge.” Her fleeting vision of the sea—her imagined escape—only emphasizes how completely her own needs have been erased. For Tsushima’s women, financial survival is a driving anxiety. Motherhood is not only an emotional role but also an economic struggle, shaping their relationships and self-worth. In 
 “South Wind,”
 Akiko’s yearning for independence is measured not in abstract freedom but in concrete numbers: “two hundred thousand yen a month.” This income represents liberation from “demeaning labels” and the meager “eighty thousand in support” from Kawamura. Her “thrill of anticipation” is tied to the prospect of financial self-reliance, which reshapes her worldview. She reclaims her domain: while Kawamura may have his, she declares her own. Her rebellion is quiet but firm—she will teach her son who his father is, but she “would not let him think he should be dependent on the man.” Here, motherhood becomes an act of creation, a way of building a self-sufficient world apart from male control. Equally striking is Tsushima’s portrayal of maternal anxiety and the suffocating need for control that can grow out of love. In 
 “Missing,”
 a mother’s fears appear as a chain of “premonitions” and painful memories of her daughter’s past transgressions. Rather than meeting these with understanding, she responds with restriction—banning her daughter from the cinema simply because she associates it with “darkness.” When her daughter asserts independence, the mother’s breakdown is devastating. She explains her daughter’s rebellion as “bacteria… caught from her father,” a metaphor that externalizes her fear and failure by blaming the absent man. Her love is genuine, but it is filtered through anxiety so deep it isolates her. Tsushima’s women are also keenly aware of the labels society sticks on them—“mistress,” “illegitimate child,” and so on. Much of their struggle lies in rejecting these labels and defining their families on their own terms. Again in 
 “South Wind,”
 Akiko makes a radical act of self-definition: “She was the mother of two children. The mother of a ten-year-old daughter and an eight-month-old son. Kawamura had his domain, and she had hers.” No longer preoccupied with titles like “mistress” or “divorced,” she centers her identity on her chosen role as mother. This refusal to accept society’s language is itself an act of resistance. What makes Tsushima’s treatment of single motherhood revolutionary is its refusal of sentimentality. She presents it as a state of conflict—love weighed against exhaustion, protection against control—while also showing the radical responsibility and quiet rebellion it entails. Her women are not pitiable victims but complex, weary, fiercely resilient figures. They navigate a world that offers them little support, armed only with their leveled gaze and a determination to carve out their own “domain.” Alongside these portraits of motherhood runs another recurring motif: daydreams and visions. These moments are not idle escapes but raw expressions of the subconscious—direct translations of fear, shame, and longing. They act as safety valves, allowing characters to process what they cannot confront head-on. In 
 “Missing,”
 for instance, a mother dreams of her daughter caught in a nightmarish tableau: seduced by a “youthful Santa Claus,” stripped of innocence, and finally confronted with the face of her ex-husband. The dream lays bare her deepest dread—that her daughter will repeat her own misery and that she is powerless to stop it. In 
 “Clearing the Thickets,”
 a pregnant protagonist dreams of a school picnic she cannot join, of a dress that won’t fit, and of standing naked before others, exposed and ashamed. This dream echoes her waking reality: a woman marked as a social outcast, unable to find belonging. Most strikingly, in 
 “The Shooting Gallery,”
 the protagonist’s fantasy of becoming a dragon is a vision of complete transformation. Exhausted and invisible, she imagines sprouting “lance-shaped wings” and “golden scales,” soaring into the sky. A dragon is powerful, untouchable, and free—everything her life as “just some mother” has denied her. Her daydream is not frivolous; it is her subconscious asserting the grandeur and significance her waking life erases. Tsushima uses these inner visions not as ornament but as a core narrative tool—diagnostic, compensatory, unfiltered, and ultimately more truthful than reality itself. The final pillar of Tsushima’s work is her exploration of women’s pursuit of agency—a pursuit that is messy, often self-destructive, but undeniably resilient. Her heroines do not suffer with grace; they stumble, lash out, and sometimes court danger. Izumi in 
 “The Chrysanthemum Beetle”
 seeks relief in a relationship she knows is shallow and transactional. She plays at intimacy—“scampering after the pigeons,” “bursting operatically into song,” whispering “We could be on a real date”—fully aware it is an elaborate pretense. Yet the performance is not naivety; it is her way of scripting a life she can bear, however briefly. Perhaps Tsushima’s boldest move is her willingness to show the darker currents of maternal feeling. In 
 “The Shooting Gallery,”
 the protagonist’s rage manifests in a shocking moment when she points a gun at her children, imagining them as enemies. This is not a literal wish for their harm but a metaphor for how motherhood has annihilated her sense of self. By exposing such unspeakable truths, Tsushima refuses to sanitize the maternal psyche. Yet even in their darkest moments, Tsushima’s women resist containment. Their “expansionism” is a refusal to shrink into despair. Izumi running to Takashi’s apartment, the mother in 
 “The Shooting Gallery”
 going to the seaside, Akiko in 
 “South Wind”
 taking an insurance job—each act is a small claim of space, a movement outward. These may not look like wise or noble choices, but they are deliberate, chosen risks. To accept their “everyday life” as final would be a spiritual death; instead, they embrace flawed, messy attempts to feel alive. Tsushima’s brilliance lies in showing that resilience does not always look pure or admirable. Sometimes it looks like drinking too much, choosing the wrong partner, or harboring violent fantasies. Yet beneath these acts is a stubborn will to exist, to desire, and to refuse erasure. Her characters’ strength lies not in their perfection, but in their relentless, imperfect movement toward life.

The Shooting Gallery & Other Stories

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