Clubbing in 70's Japan

Set My Heart on Fire

Izumi Suzuki

Helen O'Horan  (Translator)

192 pages, Paperback, Expected publication: 12 November 2024 by Verso Fiction, first published 1 January 1983.

The Japanese underground music scene in the 70's is rife with drugs, alcohol, sex and plenty of musicians trying to be something. We are taken into this world by Izumi, a young woman in her early 20's, who takes drugs and is free with her body. As we journey with Izumi, she works her way through a series of personal situations where she ruminates on what is real love, what is friendship, and who has power in relationships.

Izumi is one of the most complex characters, I have met on the page. At times she is a blank canvas that men can paint to suit their wants and needs. At other times, she is manipulative, forthright and plain nasty. Her thinking at times is warped, as she concludes that she will not do drugs but will need plenty of sexual partners to offset the cravings, “The meds would kill me before long. Each night I gave myself up to those white pills. Or into the arms of a man. I just wanted to be held by something. Taken in. I couldn’t tell what pleasure was anymore.” What Izumi knows for certain is that she does not know what love is, though she desires it, she has no clue how to obtain it. There are other moments through out the book where she ruminates on topics and how they intertwine, like beauty and happiness.

The people who circle through Izumi's world are a wonderful collection of diverse characters. Her friend Etsuko is a music journalist, and their relationship, well it is interesting. There is jealousy, respect, betrayal, regret, and their interactions towards the end are poignant.

There is an array of men who also come into Izumi’s life but the three who have the most influence being Foo, Joel and Jun. Each bring out a different aspect of who Izumi is, highlighting both the good and bad as there is misunderstandings, dependency, exploitation, admiration and promise.

Each chapter is named after a song and is a vignette. It is a clever way to bring forth Izumi’s story. It really does make you feel that as the reader, you are standing next to her as she goes on the journey. You gather a sense of Izumi’s despair through descriptions such as “Scatterings of neon lights softly stained the rich dark. It was the same night. The same night several times, all overlapping at once.” For she has entered a cycle where everything she does is on repeat. Izumi has almost no care for the future and just lives in the moment.

This is my first foray into the works of Izumi Suzuki, and I was not prepared for such a groundbreaking, powerful and compelling story. When you realise that this novel was first released in the early 1980s, Suzuki's representations of domestic violence are accurate, sensitive but brutal. As I started, I was not expecting to be taken in the direction that evolved. I was assuming this to be a young woman’s journey through the seedy underground Japanese music scene as a groupie, but it is so much more than that. Suzuki has captured and exposed a moment in time which many of us where completely unaware of. It is a powerful, and at times, uncomfortable insight but wholly realised.

Thanks to Netgalley and Verso Books for the ARC.