Mimicry Theme Analysis

Convenience Store Woman represents mimicry as a natural part of social life—but one that “normal” people are comfortable practicing only if they are unaware of it or can pretend unawareness of it. Thirty-six-year-old convenience store worker Keiko Furukura, an oddball since childhood, consciously mimics the people around her to mask her own strangeness and win social acceptance: she imitates elements from the speech patterns of her coworkers at the convenience store, and she copies the fashion sense of the coworker closest to her in age, a part-time employee named Mrs. Izumi. Yet Keiko knows that if people realized she was consciously mimicking them to simulate normality, they would think she was extremely weird, so she goes to great lengths to hide her mimicry. For example, rather than wearing the same brands as Mrs. Izumi, she does online research to figure out which fashion bloggers recommend the brands that Mrs. Izumi wears—and then wears different brands that the same bloggers recommend, thus creating a “look” that is distinct from Mrs. Izumi’s while still similar to it.

Ironically, given how uncomfortable people would be if they knew Keiko was consciously copying them, Keiko notices “normal” people copying each other all the time: throughout the book, characters who interact regularly change their speech to be more like that of their conversational partners. The dynamics of mimicry in the novel reveal the unfair demands of “normality”: to be “normal,” you must copy other people—but you have to do it apparently effortlessly, or you’re still weird. Moreover, although Keiko assumes that the people around her are copying one another unconsciously—she refers to their mimicry as an automatic, unintentional “infection” of each other—the novel leaves open the possibility that the supposedly “normal” characters are consciously copying one another to avoid ostracism just like “weird” Keiko is. Thus, the novel suggests two related points: mimicry may seem weird, but it’s a common element of social life—and even apparently “normal” people may be faking their normalcy, hiding their “weirdness,” to avoid social ostracism.