Under the Eye of the Big Bird

by

Graphic novel, 255 pages

Published April 22, 2016

ISBN:
978-1-59376-620-7
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(4 reviews)

From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions an Earth where humans are nearing extinction, and rewrites our understanding of reproduction, ecology, evolution, artificial intelligence, communal life, creation, love, and the future of humanity.

In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of "Mothers." Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings--but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.

Unfolding over fourteen interconnected episodes spanning geological eons, at once technical and pastoral, mournful and utopic, Under the Eye of the Big Bird …

1 edition

reviewed Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami

Under the Eye of the Big Bird

#SFFBookClub read for August 2025.

This is not a book I think I would have picked out for myself outside of the book club, but I found it to be a surprisingly good read. It was a little hard to see the overall picture at first due to each chapter occurring with completely different characters and situations. It made it difficult to track when you would see the names of previous characters brought up in later chapters.

Everything kind of came together in the end and for me, and even the disjointed stories made sense. For me, at least. I'm not sure if this is one that I would regularly recommend to others due to the overall vibes. I don't know a lot of people that really enjoy Japanese dystopian stories with this structure.

reviewed Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami

Under the Eye of the Big Bird

This felt to me like a much more surreal variant of North Continent Ribbon. Each story/chapter was a continuation or a tangent of a previous one, but I don't feel like the whole contributed much to a more coherent understanding of the whole picture. Overall, the vibe was very vague, and I'm not sure how much I took away from the experience.

#SFFBookClub

reviewed Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami

Under the Eye of the Big Bird

This was the #SFFBookClub book for August 2025.

In some ways, this book structurally reminded me of How High We Go in the Dark; they're both a post-apocalyptic, interconnected series of stories about humanity trying to survive. The stories here are further in the future and feel much more surreal and dreamlike. If anything, I feel like I've missed something critical as a reader--I can't quite put my finger on what this book is trying to do.

There are a few things that don't work for me. I think the stories largely don't stand on their own: there's many interesting ideas, but they don't feel connected via plot or resonate with a theme. There's also a penultimate chapter of the book where the book just out and out tells you everything it's been hinting at previously. I had guessed at a good bit of it, but it felt underwhelming …

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