The Memory Police

The Memory Police, a novel by Yōko Ogawa, was published in 1994 and then translated by Stephen Snyder for its 2019 release in English. This dreamlike, dystopian story unfolds in an enigmatic cloud of allegory. It's set on an isolated island plagued by a gradual extirpation of memories as well as the objects that conjure them. Roses are among the first to go, then birds and calendars, and the island folk themselves seem to fade in ways too. A few retain their memories and so they're hunted down by the Memory Police and disappeared, the exception being those who can remain in hiding.

The unnamed narrator is an author who processes her community's grim reality through the novels she writes, her characters similarly suffering losses that bring on the loss of the self. She hides her memory-capable editor at home, in a secret cubbyhole of a room accessible only through a trapdoor in the floor and by a makeshift funnel speaker. But the Memory Police, fascist and cold as the snow that covers the island ever more deeply, are out there, searching houses, enforcing the disappearances, removing all who remember what might be forever gone.

I quite liked this one for the unsettling calm that runs through it. Ogawa's sentences are simple and clear, contrasting eerily with the plight and horror conveyed through the imagery in her masterly descriptions. I was a bit frustrated midway through by the allegory. I wanted Ogawa or the narrator to explain why these terrible events were happening and what it all actually meant. But by the book's end the allegory is satisfying in its murk, giving us a fictional but much clearer picture of real-world truths—in particular about the importance of remembering and storytelling.

Yōko Ogawa

The Reed Cutter & Captain Shigemoto's Mother

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (July 24, 1886–July 30, 1965) was a master at burrowing right down into the heart of human relationships while describing them with precision and clarity. English translations by Anthony H. Chambers of his short story "The Reed Cutter" (蘆刈, or "Ashikari" in Japanese) and Captain Shigemoto's Mother (少将滋幹の母, or Shōshō Shigemoto no haha), published in 1932 and 1949, respectively, appear in this book which came out in 1993. The narrators for both quote from a number of old poems and other stories. Among the main themes is the transience of life, including our endeavors made out of love and for family, and the consequences of our actions over generations.

I enjoyed reading both, perhaps "The Reed Cutter" more. In Captain Shigemoto's Mother, the narrator digressed too often, which was intentional but made the narration hard to follow at times. What's best about the stories is the imagery, particularly the descriptions of nature and autumn in the first half of "The Reed Cutter" and those of death and rot towards the end of Captain Shigemoto's Mother. Remarkable writing from one of Japan's most revered literary figures.

When We Were Orphans

When We Were Orphans (2000), Kazuo Ishiguro's fifth novel, has been called the author's weakest work, and I heard that he's admitted this himself to some degree, perhaps in an interview. That said, he's such an incredibly capable storyteller that his "worst novel" would be more appropriately labeled as his "least best."

I do agree, though, that this isn't as good as his others. It felt too long in places and could've benefited from some editing to slim these parts down. At times I really enjoyed it, as much for Ishiguro's brilliant descriptions as for the story itself. He's extraordinarily astute when it comes to describing particular scenes and human nature, choosing the precise language, as Dickens would, to capture the very essence or nuance of something or someone.

I got the feeling Ishiguro didn't know exactly where he was going about two-thirds of the way through. The book follows detective Christopher Banks as he tries to solve the mystery of his parents' disappearance, which occurred during his childhood in 1930s Shanghai. From London he eventually returns to Shanghai, areas of which the Japanese at this point are regularly bombing. There he tries to track down those who may know what happened to his folks. He suspects they got caught up in the opium trade and were kidnapped by a warlord and have for years been locked up in a house. And this part, towards the end, didn't make much sense to me. Banks being so sure that his parents would still be in that house after so many years was implausible. And why did Ishiguro devote so many pages to Banks' seemingly endless search for that house? It felt as though the narrator or author had become distracted from telling the actual story. But to end on a positive note, I think the first half of the book is excellent, and the last fifty pages or so are good too, and whatever makes the other parts disappointing does not make the book anything less than a pretty good read.