Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata

Growing up Asian-American, I have always loved exploring Asian cultures. I was recommended Convenience Store Woman from a college professor who teaches Japanese Literature after 1970 with a focus on women writers. Convenience Store Woman has sparked my interest in Japanese societal norms because it is simply so different from America. I definitely find myself researching more about this topic soon!

Convenience Store Woman is a national bestseller novel written by Sayaka Murata. She is a Japanese author who has won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, the Mishima Yukio Prize, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, and the Akutagawa Prize. As of 2025, she is 45 years old and has written around 6 books. Convenience Store Woman is based on her experiences as working in a convenience store for 18 years, as the protagonist did in the novel.

Convenience stores are implemented into the everyday life of many Japanese people. With their high-quality food and products, they attract many and are very accessible. They are cheap, quick, and convenient, just how the name suggests.

Fun fact: convenience stores in Japan are actually nicknamed “conbinis!” 

Convenience Store Woman is about a 36-year-old Japanese woman named Keiko Furukura living in Tokyo, Japan. She has been working at a convenience store for 18 years, and has grown quite attached to the environment and nature of the convenience store. In the novel, I noticed how Murata highlights how important the convenience store culture is to Japan and how others view her for working in a convenience store for so long.

The first thing that stood out to me from this novel was the convenience store culture in Japan. Unlike most American convenience stores, working in a convenience store in Japan requires great training and practice (Murata 15). In fact, Keiko Furukura found this hard work so rewarding that she stuck with it for 18 years. The Smile Mart outside Hiiromachi Station had become a part of her, to the point where she saw the culture of working there as a religion (Murata 47). After reading this novel, I connected this industrious behavior to that of the Japanese Corporate Culture, a topic I learned about when I completed the “Globalization of East Asia” course from edX, where working was glamourized and put upon a pedestal. All throughout Japan, even the convenience stores, there were hard working people.

However, Keiko Furukura’s friends did not always support her in her life choices. They are seen constantly supporting her to get a husband and stop working part-time at a convenience store, saying that she “ ‘can’t go on like this’ ” (Murata 79). Being a 36-year-old woman working in a convenience store wasn’t exactly the ideal lifestyle that everyone had. But to Keiko, it was her life. With her intense use of imagery of what a day looks like in the store, I was amazed how someone could highlight such a mundane-seeming activity. It captured me in the book and made me realize that there was art in everything, while it might not seem like the best career. But Keiko is also looked down upon for not having a husband or any romantic partner. In Japan and so many other Asian countries, it is seen as ideal for a woman to get married and stop working while the husband does the majority of the work. This belief diminishes women, and makes them seem like they cannot be independent because of how society still strongly supports this belief today.

I absolutely love how industrious Keiko is in the novel, as it shows great independence and strength. It also shows her not staying with the pack and pursuing what she loves the most: working at convenience stores! Near the end of the novel where she is pressured to attend a job interview for a temping agency, she ends up arriving an hour early (Murata 155). She decides to kill time by entering a convenience store, and immediately is teleported back into her old ways. She starts rearranging the items to where they would be the most successful in terms of sales, and even mentioned that the store was calling to her and that she understood it perfectly (Murata 159). Even when trying to conform to the normal society, she simply cannot resist the environment of a convenience store as it is like she is an animal with an instinct. In conclusion, she overcame these societal norms of having a higher- paying job and a spouse, and truly was led by her heart.

After reading Convenience Store Woman, I can positively say that it is one of my favorite novels. With its humor and several highlights of Japanese culture, it immediately drew me in. The niche topics of convenience stores also sparked my interest, because I remember visiting many convenience stores when I was on a family vacation to Japan. Overall, Convenience Store Woman is a cute and humorous novel with many important lessons hidden within its pages. Japan is a country with a lot of unique characteristics, and I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about Japanese convenience store culture. 

Happy reading!