Review of “Reiko’s Universe Box” (1981)
Kajio Shinji (writer).
Read in 2020.
Read in Speculative Japan.
A housewife gets a holographic alien solar system.
A feminist allegory of a typical young housewife’s situation, with the solar system standing in for a child as well as the microcosm of the home. As allegories go it’s pretty well built, which makes it thicker than “The Pygmy Planet” (1932), but it’s still thin by literary standards.
References here: “Proposal for ‘The Day I Bought a Star’” (2004).