The “Good” Wife | Unveiling the Power of Homemakers in “Mild Vertigo” by Mieko Kanai

Mild Vertigo is a novel for women, mothers, and any homemaker who deserves to be seen for the ways they have kept and continue to keep the world spinning, just one load of laundry at a time. 

A Voice for Women

Mild Vertigo is a timeless exploration of what it means to be a homemaker and defines what it has meant to fit into the traditional qualities of womanhood for generations. Written in a stream of consciousness flow, Mieko Kanai investigates how the gendered division of labor in the home has gone unrecognized and underappreciated despite its massive and dizzying impact on the individual. 

Feminist, funny, and quietly impactful, Mild Vertigo is a voice for women, mothers, and any homemaker who deserves to be seen for the ways they have kept and continue to keep the world spinning, just one load of laundry at a time. 

Being “The Wife” 

For the most part, the kind of woman who causes trouble for married men, going by what I’ve seen and heard, harbors a malicious prejudice toward “the wife”, and so if “the wife” in question happened to be a housewife, then any such woman would of course assume that the housewife was an entity who would without question wash her husband’s underwear, without a second thought, and so the graying underwear would be deemed nobody’s fault but my own, and that idea makes me mad, so it’s probably better in the long run, to have him wear underwear that’s properly washed, she thought. (Kanai 40)

The writing style of Mild Vertigo is defined by seemingly endless sentences that embody the over-crowded headspace of the housewife, Natsumi. These sentences are a tangle of chores and daily stress amongst a background drone of nothingness in her empty house. To contextualize Natsumi’s experience is to understand the facets of her identity that most often present themselves in her swirling thoughts, which is most often her role as a wife and a mother. 

A wife to a typical “salary-man” type in Japan, Natsumi spends most of her days alone, prepping meals and the house for when her husband and children come home and chatting with other housewives and older neighbors who are also home during the work week. In these moments preparing for the return of the rest of her household, Natsumi’s mind is consumed by the needs of others and how she might be perceived as a wife. Looking at her husband’s laundry, she is drawn into devolving thoughts of how gray underwear would make her look as a wife—the very sight of the underwear causes her to think of how it would look to a woman with whom her husband could cheat on her with. To protect her relationship and her perception as a wife, she feels the need to wash his underwear and replace any that have gone gray or threadbare. 

Although it makes her angry, Natsumi feels compelled to mother her own husband in order to ensure that her reputation would not be tarnished in the event of her husband having an affair—regardless of the fact that neither the hypothetical affair nor imperfect underwear would be her fault.

The pressure to be a “perfect wife” in the public eye is only intensified by the loneliness of the role itself. When Natsumi is not consumed with thoughts and tasks surrounding her image and role as a wife and mother, her days are otherwise occupied with the gossipy chatter of her neighbors, other housewives and widows. In a moment where she projects a man in the street coming on to her, Natsumi suddenly realizes just how rare it is for a housewife to speak to anyone besides their husband. 

When she does have conversations with the neighbors, they are not necessarily fulfilling, but provide some scant entertainment and diversity in an otherwise dull, repetitive day. And worse, when her husband comes home, he has little interest in these conversations when Natsumi attempts to engage him about them. These conversations may seem like just snippets of gossip, but they comprise a massive part of Natsumi’s daily life. Without a partner to share them with at the end of a long day of toiling on her own, the role of the wife is to accept the workload as well as the loneliness of this role. 

Taking care of the home, her children, her husband, and having to completely care for her own needs as well is not only exhausting, but repetitive and lonely. Natsumi is expected to keep up their lifestyle and its appearance to others–if her husband has an affair, she will be scrutinized for any signs of being a subpar wife. To protect herself and her image, as well as her marriage, she must perform as the “perfect housewife”; the wife that can manage the cleanliness of the home, put food on the table every day and every night, buy the appropriate gifts for their families, and never leave anyone in her household wanting for anything more than she provides. And this she must do without any expectation of return. Natsumi must pick out her own birthday gifts, and keep herself entertained through an endless roster of tasks for the rest of her life. With hardly any friendships or real time for them, and a husband who does not care to hear the petty gossip that alone adds flavor to Natsumi’s life, she has to simply settle for being alone.

Being “The Mother”

There was something Sisyphean in the nature of the roster of simple domestic tasks that she had to get through day in, day out, a sense that however much she did there was never any end in sight, and it was only what you might call ‘family occasions’ that brought multifold minor changes to the routine, and preparations for them, too, I throw myself into avidly, and quite enjoy, but after the fact I get irritated by it all. (54)

Being the perfect wife also extends to being the perfect mother. Considered part of the role in this hetero-normative ideal of the family unit, Natsumi is expected to be not just any mother, but a “good” mother. Being a good mother means being the one to remember what foods her children like, planning special occasions like birthdays and Christmases, and being the most responsible for the health, happiness, and future of her children. While her husband can be immediately praised for being a wonderful husband for returning from work to play video games with their kids and indulging in the greasy fried foods of their taste, Natsumi has to be the voice of reason that maintains the long-term happiness of her family unit. Instead of joining in, her mind must be focused on ensuring that her children have the resources, understanding of social customs, and lasting memories of a happy childhood that will prepare them for life.

Ultimately, being a mother means securing the family above all else; a lifelong commitment to being the family caretaker. Natsumi describes a pressure to not divorce her husband “for the kids” (141), an active thought that suppresses her own needs. Instead of being able to identify and address any possible relationship concerns between herself and her husband—such as her husband’s lack of communication or care for her personal struggles and daily life—Natsumi knows that there is an existing pressure on their relationship by way of their children. This pressure comes from the ideal of the “happy family”, and the fear that children without solidified family units will become unmoored. As alluded to in her fears about her husband’s fraying underwear, Natsumi is aware that should her family appear to fail to meet the inherent expectation and look of a happy family, this will eventually signify failure on her end at being the right kind of mother and wife. 

What comes from these fears is a form of built-in surveillance—monitoring one’s own actions and even thoughts to ensure that the performance is up to a performative standard of what a good wife or mother should be. This is characterized in the tasks Natsumi does without being asked, such as replacing her husband’s underwear and doing his laundry for him, as well as throwing herself whole-heartedly into the planning and execution of “family occasions” that should, and partly are, enjoyable. While they can be enjoyable, the irritation Natsumi feels afterwards is attributable to the amount of labor she is doing to meet unspoken rules, and feeling the weight of her responsibility that is constantly enforced by her fear of what would happen to her family without her constant planning and labor. 

Being “Selfish”

I have a bit of money, my own savings I mean, not a huge amount or anything, but it’s okay to splurge from time to time, do a bit of retail therapy, going to the supermarket every day and only ever buying food and tissues and cleaning products gets so dull after a while, don’t you think? (54)

Then thinking about how today she’d spent a lot of money entirely on herself, she decided to sculpt the ketchup-flavored butter rice that she was making to accompany the cabbage rolls into star shapes, to please the children. (68)

Alongside this fear is the guilt present at any moment of “selfishness.” As implied with Natsumi’s constantly crowded headspace, there is very little time for self-care. But if there is, this perceived lapse in time spent caring for her family is registered as wrongdoing. 

Natsumi’s mother, the previous generation of housewife, invites Natsumi to join her shopping trip at the mall, citing the boring nature of only going to the supermarket to buy household items. What she is referencing is the tedium of only caring for others without leaving any time for one’s own “retail therapy.” What Natsumi’s mother is ultimately putting into context is the need for an outlet. Personal spending is a way that one chooses to present themselves in the world, and can be a way to define how one sees themselves as a person outside of their otherwise duties. Even if it is just a momentary consumerist splurge, shopping for oneself is a way to assert one’s own individuality. 

But even so, shopping as self-care and a form of self-expression still bucks against the wall of surveilled selfishness; something decidedly anti-wife, anti-mother. Natsumi’s mother feels the need to qualify that the money she spends shopping is her own savings. Here lies a clear demarcation of the financial elements at play in being “the housewife”—the separation between what is considered acceptable for household income to be spent on, which is evidently not on the wife/mother. Additionally, spending money on clothing can be viewed as frivolous in the eyes of others under this viewpoint, those who believe that finances should be put towards your children and household first. 

This potential viewpoint is what sticks with Natsumi, and makes her question her own choice to put money towards herself. After buying a blouse that makes her feel beautiful, she almost immediately thinks of reasons to regret the purchase—it isn’t timeless enough, it’s too extravagant. It is this thinking that influences her towards putting more effort into her children’s dinner—she is “making up” for buying something that symbolically aims to separate her from her family unit as a beautiful woman on her own instead of a “good mother.” Instead of seeing herself as someone worthy of making a purchase she is financially prepared to make for herself, Natsumi is consumed by thoughts of how this purchase will make her look to others as a mother and wife. Will people think that she is selfish, and not an adequate provider for her family?

Laundry Loads & Mental Loads

“Hey, where’s Mom? There’s no pajamas laid out for us!” (80)

“Okay, okay. Dad’ll put your pajamas on for you tonight, they’re in the drawers in your room, aren’t they?” (80)

I wish I’d gotten him used to doing at least a little bit of the housework by himself, showing him how to do things always feels like such a bother and I get so irritated and end up thinking that I’d rather just do it myself. (149)

These thoughts bring on a sea of constant indecision amongst a surplus of familial responsibility, and are what bring this story to its title, Mild Vertigo. Plagued by her own thoughts, each action (or non-action) on Natsumi’s part is intricately tied up in her worth as a person, because her worth is ultimately tied up in her role as a wife and mother. Because of this high stakes mentality, Natsumi is often left with the entirety of this dizzying mental load in her family. 

This imbalance is most notable in how little Natsumi’s husband, the other adult in this dynamic, really knows about the work of running the household. When getting ready for bed, it is Natsumi who their kids ask for at the end of the day—she is who gets them ready for bed, and it is she who knows where their pajamas are. With her husband’s question, it makes it clear to whom this task is assigned to; even though she spends her whole day before he is home caring for their children, taking care of their house, and preparing for their daily evening meal together. Still, Natsumi is the one expected to manage even the last tasks of the day, and the knowledge of where things are is only hers to know. 

This extends to housework. Natsumi’s thoughts are also clear about the concept of her sole responsibility for household chores and the mental work that goes into them. Again, only she has the knowledge of how to do things to take care of the house, even if her household is technically run by two adults. The idea of it being more of a bother to explain to one’s husband or boyfriend how to do the routine things that their wife or girlfriend does is a well-documented phenomenon. If Natsumi or any housewife or even girlfriend wants help, often the process of coaching one’s adult partner through these mundane tasks can feel more exhausting than just doing the task that they know how (out of unspoken expectation) to do. Things like doing laundry are oftentimes things only young girls are taught in their adolescence, and thus men such as Natsumi’s husband wind up washing all of their whites and colored laundry together, resulting in a dingy mess. In the end, it can feel easier to simply do the task rather than take the time to explain it, therefore resulting in the continued infantilization of the partner who is meant to be just that—a partner in life, helping to make the everyday life more passable. 

Instead of partnership in making a home, what Natsumi is left with is this sense of mild vertigo. The same experiences flash by day by day, and her mind is consumed by extraneous details that only she can manage. The effect of this experience is dizzying, a disorientation fed by a life that is so busy and yet tedious; full of high-stakes small tasks that are somehow all attached to one’s self worth and social acceptability. 

Making Home

Looking at the seemingly endless array of photographs showing scenes of common people in which their small moments of joy and varied kinds of despair and loneliness have been gently captured amid the play of light and shadow, we can only gasp in wonder at the scrupulousness of the unfading curiosity that exists in the surreptitious desire of the eye, the finger, the legs of that person behind the camera who captured them. (131)

Taking a step back, the experience of reading Mild Vertigo asks the reader to recognize and appreciate all of the different forms of labor that the homemaker provides on a daily basis; seemingly risking their own sanity to do so. There is a moment in Mild Vertigo that provides clarity on this perspective, which is that of the long art essay that Natsumi reads; an essay that takes up 17 pages in a book that is only 161 pages in total. While this might seem random at first glance, what Kanai is doing here is providing a wonderful, while perhaps quirky, moment of perspective of her work here as a whole. 

Although speaking about the artistic form of photography, this essay invites the reader to see the bigger picture of this work, which is seeing “scenes of common people in which their small moments of joy and varied kinds of despair and loneliness have been gently captured amid the play of light and shadow.” Natsumi’s life is the moment in focus here, and Mild Vertigo is a way of capturing the complexity of her life, and life of millions of other housewives and mothers like her, whose labor, thoughts, and emotions go unrecognized. It is through their labor that lives are formed, protected, and made possible every day. 

As we as readers read Mild Vertigo, we are called to “gasp in wonder at the scrupulousness of the unfading curiosity that exists in the surreptitious desire of the eye, the finger, the legs of that person behind the camera who captured them.” This element of the quote is to understand Kanai’s purpose in writing Mild Vertigo, and to acknowledge the role of the reader to become conscious of and absorb the magnitude of those lives that others may see as insignificant; to raise up these lives, moments, and labors to be seen at the level of an art form. These lives represent the art of struggle and love as a mother, a wife, a homemaker, a care provider. These lives are worthy of being seen, these lives are worthy of respect. It is no easy feat to care for a home on your own and still be sane by the end of it. 

~ Rylie Fong

About Mieko Kanai, Author of Mild Vertigo

Mieko Kanai is a Japanese writer, poet, and literary critic. She is known as a writer who weaves with the abstract, and creates surrealist worlds for her readers to live within. Her success with writing came at a young age—just one year after she graduated from Takasaki Girls’ High School in 1966, she was nominated for the Osamu Dazai Prize. Since then, Kanai has been nominated for the 1970 Akutagawa Prize and awarded the 1968 Gendaishi Techou Prize for poetry, the 1979 Izumi Kyoka Prize, and the 1988 Women’s Literature Prize.

As a Bookshop, Malaprop’s, BAM, Barnes & Noble, Audiobooks.com, Amazon, and Envato affiliate, LitStack may earn a commission at no cost to you when you purchase products through our affiliate links.