Out by Natsuo Kirino: A Neo Marxist Analysis of Gendered Labor and Commodity Fetishism

This article employs a Neo Marxist theoretical perspective to analyze Natsuo Kirino's 1997 novel Out, focusing on the novel's critique of gendered labor practices and commodity fetishism in late capitalist Japan. This article explores the novel's representation of four women caught in the crossfire of exploitative wage labo r and unremunerated domestic work, exposing systematic dehumanization under patriarchal capitalism. Furthermore, Kirino takes the Marxist idea of commodity fetishism to its extreme human bodies as commodities in economic exchange. This article argues, thro article argues, through close textual analysis, that Out is a radical critique of ugh close textual analysis, that Out is a radical critique of contemporary capitalism, revealing how economic systems reduce human beings, contemporary capitalism, revealing how economic systems reduce human beings, especially women, to mere instruments of production and exchange.especially women, to mere instruments of production and exchange.