Earthlings

Earthlings (2018) is a psychological horror novel by Japanese author Sayaka Murata. Murata is the author of the international bestseller Convenience Store Woman (2016), which received Japan’s Akutagawa Prize. Her work often explores nonconformity and social alienation, drawing from her own childhood feeling of being an outsider, performing “normalcy.” Earthlings was a national bestseller and was named a Best Book of the Year by publications including the New York Times and Time Magazine. The novel follows Natsuki, a woman who, as a child, adopts the belief that she is an alien in order to navigate a traumatic upbringing and a conformist adult society she calls “the Factory.” The book examines themes such as The Destructive Nature of Societal Conformity, Survival as an Act of Radical Rebellion, and Deconstructing the Logic of Human Norms.

This guide refers to the 2021 Grove Press paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of bullying, child abuse, child sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, graphic violence, sexual content, suicidal ideation, death by suicide, and death.

Plot Summary

Eleven-year-old Natsuki travels with her family to her grandparents’ house in the mountains of Akishina, Japan, for the annual Obon festival. She believes she is a magician guided by her stuffed hedgehog, Piyyut, an emissary from Planet Popinpobopia. 

A flashback reveals that two years earlier, she and her cousin Yuu, who is two years older than her, made a pact. Yuu confessed that his mother told him he is an alien, and Natsuki revealed she is a magician. They promised to be boyfriend and girlfriend until his spaceship returned. 

In the present, Natsuki and Yuu reunite in the attic of their grandparents’ house and reaffirm their bond. However, the family’s vacation is cut short when Natsuki’s older sister, Kise, becomes ill, forcing them to decide to leave early the next day. Devastated by their imminent separation, Natsuki proposes to Yuu. They sneak out at dawn to the family graveyard, hold a wedding ceremony with Piyyut as the pastor, and make a “marriage pledge” that includes the promise to “[s]urvive, whatever it takes” (30).

Back home, Natsuki develops the worldview that her suburban town is a “Baby Factory” for producing humans. Her family treats her as a scapegoat, and her mother frequently abuses her, physically and emotionally. At cram school, her teacher, Mr. Igasaki, begins to sexually abuse her under the guise of correcting her posture. When Natsuki tries to tell her mother, her mother reacts with rage, accuses Natsuki of having a “filthy mind,” and beats her severely. 

During the local summer festival, Mr. Igasaki lures Natsuki to his house by lying that her friend is sick inside. There, he forces her to perform oral sex. Natsuki experiences the trauma through what she perceives as an out-of-body “magical power,” viewing the scene from above and seeing herself as a “tool.” Afterward, she loses her sense of taste.

The family is forced to return to Akishina for the unexpected funeral of Natsuki’s grandfather. Believing Mr. Igasaki will eventually kill her, Natsuki tells Yuu she wants to have sex to truly consummate their marriage before her body “stops being [hers]” (71). On the night after the burial, they sneak out to the graveyard and have sex. Immediately afterward, believing her life is over, Natsuki attempts to die by suicide by swallowing her mother’s sleeping pills. Yuu wakes up and forces her to spit out the pills, reminding her of their pledge to survive. 

Their family, who went out to look for them, discovers them naked together and reacts with fury. Natsuki’s father hits her, Yuu is beaten, and Natsuki is locked in the storehouse. The next morning, her family takes her home in disgrace, forbidding her from ever seeing Yuu again. In the car, she discovers the marriage pledge in her shoe, hidden there by Yuu.

The narrative jumps forward 23 years. Natsuki is 34 and lives in a platonic, asexual marriage with a man named Tomoya, an arrangement made through an online service to evade societal pressure. They refer to society in general as the Factory, the purpose of which is to procreate and serve as a tool of society. As a result of her childhood trauma, she still cannot taste food. 

Tomoya, who has also been abused by his family and feels like an outsider, becomes obsessed with Natsuki’s romanticized stories of Akishina. After he is fired from his job, he expresses a wish to visit the family house there. Through a series of family interventions, they are granted permission, despite the fact that Yuu is currently living in the old family house. 

Natsuki and Tomoya travel to Akishina, and she reunites with Yuu for the first time in decades. Tomoya explains their worldview to a bewildered Yuu, describing themselves as aliens hiding from the “Factory.”

A long flashback details the events after Natsuki and Yuu had sex in Akishina. Natsuki was locked in her room and constantly surveilled by her parents and Kise. Her magical companion Piyyut began speaking to her clearly. 

Forced to return to cram school, she was summoned by Mr. Igasaki for another “special lesson.” Piyyut told her that Mr. Igasaki was controlled by a “Wicked Witch,” and she must kill the witch to save herself and the world. Natsuki snuck out at night, armed with a small scythe her father brought home from Akishina, and broke into Mr. Igasaki’s house. In a dissociative state, she attacked what she perceived as a “blue lump” in his bedroom, hacking at it repeatedly until it was still. She burned her bloody clothes and the scythe in her school’s incinerator. 

Afterward, Natsuki was ill with a fever, and when she recovered, she learned that Mr. Igasaki was brutally murdered, supposedly by a stalker. Piyyut informed Natsuki that her mission is complete, revealed that she has always been a Popinpobopian, but she cannot go home because the spaceship has left. Piyyut then fell silent forever.

In the present, Natsuki, Tomoya, and Yuu live together in Akishina. Natsuki’s sister, Kise, arrives as an “envoy” from the Factory, pressuring them to return to their conventional lives. 

After Kise leaves, Tomoya decides he must commit a taboo act to break his conditioning and leaves for Tokyo to ask his brother for consent to have sex. Uncomfortable being left alone with Natsuki, Yuu also leaves. Tomoya’s father pursues Tomoya to Akishina, beats him severely, and forcibly takes both Tomoya and Natsuki back to their respective families.

Natsuki and Tomoya are separated and interrogated by their families, who pressure them to consummate their marriage and produce a child. Kise confronts Natsuki, revealing that she saw Natsuki go into Mr. Igasaki’s house years ago, looked through the window, and saw them kissing. She implies that she has long suspected Natsuki’s involvement in his murder. 

Tomoya decides to submit to the Factory but urges Natsuki to escape, reaffirming his belief that she is a true Popinpobopian. Instead, Natsuki convinces him they are both Popinpobopians and must escape together and rescue Yuu.

They find Yuu staying at their uncle’s house. Yuu confesses he has survived by obeying silent “orders” from adults his whole life but has now lost this guidance. Tomoya performs a “divorce ceremony” to free all three of them from societal contracts. Feeling a new sense of freedom, Yuu decides to join them in Akishina. 

The three return to Akishina and begin living as true Popinpobopians, rejecting all Earthling conventions and trying to make decisions solely by logic. They live at the house secretly, hiding from the village, and steal food from nearby houses and forage to survive. 

A landslide traps them at the house. Mr. Igasaki’s parents, given evidence by Kise that Natsuki killed their son, arrive at the house to take revenge. In a violent struggle, the trio kills them.

Facing starvation, they decide to butcher and eat the corpses. As Natsuki eats the human flesh, her sense of taste, which has been gone for 23 years, miraculously returns. As their food supply dwindles, they agree that they must eat one another to survive, beginning by tasting each other’s flesh, which also restores Natsuki’s hearing. 

A rescue party, led by Kise, arrives to save them from the landslide. They are horrified to find the three naked, emaciated, and covered in blood, with grotesquely swollen bellies from their cannibalistic feast. Yuu identifies them as aliens from Planet Popinpobopia. Tomoya declares that the three of them are now “pregnant,” and Yuu proclaims that as aliens, they will multiply. The three Popinpobopians, holding hands, step out into the snowy light to meet their future.