Murata Sayaka’s latest novel World 99, published in Japan in 2025, is set in a society disrupted by the unbearably cute pyocorns, animals that become an increasingly central part of people’s lives.
When Murata Sayaka won the Akutagawa Prize for Convenience Store Woman in 2016, the novelist Okuizumi Hikaru, who was one of the judges, gave the following assessment.
“Many thinkers have extensively discussed the phenomenon whereby everyone appears to be speaking their own words and following their own desires, but actually they are just mimicking the words and desires of others. This book vividly, lucidly, and humorously depicts the reality of our world through a protagonist who departs from what society considers to be common sense.”
Murata’s new book World 99 is similarly characteristic of the author in how it reveals to us what our world is really like.
A Human Robot
The main character Kisaragi Sorako has known since childhood that she is always splitting herself into smaller parts. For example, she becomes the cute Sora-chan for her parents, while pleasing her classmates as Kisa-chan. Sorako feels a hollowness in how she is always meeting others’ expectations, and calls herself a “human robot.”
Is this really so strange though? As phrases like “reading the room” indicate, people are expected to behave appropriately to meet various situations. Everyone must feel that sensation of successfully adapting to different rules and contexts, bringing out alternative versions of their selves when with family, business customers, or old friends.
However, Murata is an author who goes beyond simple depictions of everyday life. In World 99, there are mysterious creatures called pyocorns, high-end pets that everyone wants, which add a careful calculated level of discord to the story.
The pyocorns were unbearably cute. One of the zookeepers explained that they were created through the accidental combination of panda, dolphin, rabbit, and alpaca genes at a “foreign” research facility . . .
They had charming round eyes surrounded by fur, and round, white noses. Their little pink mouths had four teeth and they tottered along on four short legs. They were so sweet and admirable that there was a kind of invisible pressure that anyone who saw them and said that they weren’t cute would immediately be judged as cruel and heartless.
When a pyocorn arrives in Sorako’s house, the story develops dramatically without any clear indication as to how much is in the real world and how much in imagination.
A Universal Question
Humans evolve pyocorns from the simple, cute pets that they are at first, giving them two extra legs so that they can do housework too. The creatures also become sexual partners for people, even getting pregnant and giving birth. As ideas surrounding marriage change, so that it is normal for friends to marry each other, impregnating pyocorns and having them give birth becomes a symbol of wealth. People naturally become divided by their DNA, economic power, and upbringing, and end up living in different worlds.
Negative emotions like anger or sadness become unwelcome, and people aim to show that they have no hostility toward each other.
The world depicted is surely pure fantasy, but that does not mean it is possible to dismiss the book with a laugh. Readers cannot evade the universal, fundamental question it asks: “What does it mean to be human?”
If pyocorns take on all the bothersome tasks, people no longer fall in love, and their worlds are predetermined, what is left for humans to do? What is it that only they can do? Why should they have dealings with each other?
Murata creates an apparently incredible story, but what she seems to want to convey is the essence of humanity when so much has been stripped away, as well as her fascination with people. I think this is what captivates her readers.
Murata Sayaka’s Konbini ningen is translated as Convenience Store Woman by Ginny Tapley Takemori.
Sekai 99 (World 99)
By Murata Sayaka
Published by Shūeisha in 2025.
ISBN: 978-4-08-771879-9
(Originally published in Japanese on August 22, 2025. Banner photo: The cover for World 99. Courtesy Shūeisha.)