Convenience Store Woman

Throughout Convenience Store Woman, Keiko talks about her cells and those of the store “being replaced” (55). She seems obsessed with the idea that cells in one’s body are constantly being replaced, making people slightly different from what they were the previous day. During a meeting with her friend Miho, Keiko notes that “just as all the water that was in [her] body last time [...] has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up [Keiko] have changed too” (30). She notices subtle changes in people that they themselves don’t. Keiko tells her sister that she noticed her being “more like a grown-up than before,” while her sister states that she has been a grown-up “for some time now” (45). But Keiko can tell her cells changed and that she now has “crow’s feet” and a “more relaxed” manner of speech (45).

Similarly, Keiko notes that the store itself is constantly being replenished, every item sold being “replaced” by “the same items” in “their places” (43). These figurative “cells” of the store seem to regenerate like the cells in Keiko’s body. When Keiko is away from the store, her cells yearn to be with the store’s cells until two weeks have gone by and all of the store’s water “had already run through [her] body” (102).