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The Last Children of Tokyo
Yoshiro thinks he might never die. A hundred years old and counting, he is one of Japan's many 'old-elderly'; men and women who remember a time before the air and the sea were poisoned, before terrible catastrophe prompted Japan to shut itself off from the rest of the world. He may live for decades yet, but he knows his beloved great-grandson - born frail and prone to sickness - might not survive to adulthood. Day after day, it takes all of Yoshiro's sagacity to keep Mumei alive.
As hopes for Japan's youngest generation fade, a secretive organisation embarks on an audacious plan to find a cure - might Yoshiro's great-grandson be the key to saving the last children of Tokyo?
As hopes for Japan's youngest generation fade, a secretive organisation embarks on an audacious plan to find a cure - might Yoshiro's great-grandson be the key to saving the last children of Tokyo?
138 pages, Paperback
First published October 31, 2014
About the author
Yōko Tawada
122 books758 followersYōko Tawada (多和田葉子 Tawada Yōko, born March 23, 1960) is a Japanese writer currently living in Berlin, Germany. She writes in both Japanese and German.
Tawada was born in Tokyo, received her undergraduate education at Waseda University in 1982 with a major in Russian literature, then studied at Hamburg University where she received a master's degree in contemporary German literature. She received her doctorate in German literature at the University of Zurich. In 1987 she published Nur da wo du bist da ist nichts—Anata no iru tokoro dake nani mo nai (A Void Only Where You Are), a collection of poems in a German and Japanese bilingual edition.
Tawada's Missing Heels received the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 1991, and The Bridegroom Was a Dog received the Akutagawa Prize in 1993. In 1999 she became writer-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four months. Her Suspect on the Night Train won the Tanizaki Prize and Ito Sei Literary Prize in 2003.
Tawada received the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 1996, a German award to foreign writers in recognition of their contribution to German culture, and the Goethe Medal in 2005.
(from Wikipedia)
Tawada was born in Tokyo, received her undergraduate education at Waseda University in 1982 with a major in Russian literature, then studied at Hamburg University where she received a master's degree in contemporary German literature. She received her doctorate in German literature at the University of Zurich. In 1987 she published Nur da wo du bist da ist nichts—Anata no iru tokoro dake nani mo nai (A Void Only Where You Are), a collection of poems in a German and Japanese bilingual edition.
Tawada's Missing Heels received the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 1991, and The Bridegroom Was a Dog received the Akutagawa Prize in 1993. In 1999 she became writer-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four months. Her Suspect on the Night Train won the Tanizaki Prize and Ito Sei Literary Prize in 2003.
Tawada received the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 1996, a German award to foreign writers in recognition of their contribution to German culture, and the Goethe Medal in 2005.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,613 reviews
June 26, 2023
Full of metaphors and unexplained reversions of normal society, this book felt more as a setup to something than a finished end product - 1.5 stars
We follow Yoshiro and his great grandson Mumei, who has many physical disabilities being one of the The Last Children of Tokyo in this post apocalyptic novella. After an unnamed cataclysm Japan is thrown back at itself and the references to shinto, buddhism and Japanese myths and folktales are abundant. Also language is closed off from the outside world and changes in isolation, with foreign words disappearing and kanji changing meaning. Interestingly enough this is also an important topic in a book of another Japanese author: The Memory Police that was shortlisted for the International Bookerprize 2020.
The pacing in this book is peculiar. We have 140 pages of basically an aging man bringing his sick great grandchild to school and then suddenly, with 30 pages to go, there is a time jump of around 7 years and some semblance of action. Meanwhile characters don’t really get into focus, Mumei seems saintlike in his acceptance of the situation while Yoshiro is a sort of walking Wikipedia article.
Mood and atmosphere is certainly present, an interesting world and pretty images is not the problem. However I do feel Yōko Tawada takes on a lot for such a short book: aging, nationalistic isolation and environmental collapse. Even the sidewalks in this world need to be transformed to unbreakable glass slabs instead of moving the actual story along.
There are transformations from male into female (hello Orlando!) and so much exposition on the various changes after the mysterious calamity.
We have internet down, so now robotized pigeons (because GPS is apparently still a thing?) instead of email.
There is so much going on in the setting that the whole story itself feels underdeveloped.
Rarely I feel a book would be better being longer, but here it is the other way around
The Last Children Of Tokyo (or The Emissary) reads like a long teaser and did not satisfy in my opinion.
We follow Yoshiro and his great grandson Mumei, who has many physical disabilities being one of the The Last Children of Tokyo in this post apocalyptic novella. After an unnamed cataclysm Japan is thrown back at itself and the references to shinto, buddhism and Japanese myths and folktales are abundant. Also language is closed off from the outside world and changes in isolation, with foreign words disappearing and kanji changing meaning. Interestingly enough this is also an important topic in a book of another Japanese author: The Memory Police that was shortlisted for the International Bookerprize 2020.
The pacing in this book is peculiar. We have 140 pages of basically an aging man bringing his sick great grandchild to school and then suddenly, with 30 pages to go, there is a time jump of around 7 years and some semblance of action. Meanwhile characters don’t really get into focus, Mumei seems saintlike in his acceptance of the situation while Yoshiro is a sort of walking Wikipedia article.
Mood and atmosphere is certainly present, an interesting world and pretty images is not the problem. However I do feel Yōko Tawada takes on a lot for such a short book: aging, nationalistic isolation and environmental collapse. Even the sidewalks in this world need to be transformed to unbreakable glass slabs instead of moving the actual story along.
There are transformations from male into female (hello Orlando!) and so much exposition on the various changes after the mysterious calamity.
We have internet down, so now robotized pigeons (because GPS is apparently still a thing?) instead of email.
There is so much going on in the setting that the whole story itself feels underdeveloped.
Rarely I feel a book would be better being longer, but here it is the other way around
The Last Children Of Tokyo (or The Emissary) reads like a long teaser and did not satisfy in my opinion.
September 4, 2020
Short, strange, and whimsical, The Emissary tracks Mumei, a sickly child, and his great-grandfather Yoshiro as the pair wanders about post-apocalyptic Tokyo. An environmental catastrophe has left Japan with immortal elders and weak youths, and prompted the nation to sequester itself from the rest of the world. In delicate and ethereal prose, the author captures the loneliness of Mumei and Yoshiro’s daily routines, and describes the changes in their country’s customs since the time of ecological ruin. The serenity of the novella is occasionally punctured by flashes of trauma or fury. Readers searching for a well-structured story will be disappointed, but Tawada’s style is mesmerizing.
April 30, 2018
I have no idea what I just read but I enjoyed reading it
October 29, 2018
The dentist in this story was 105 years old. ( normal adult age).
As a science-fiction book - we immediately suspend belief... we learn this generation has pretty much stopped dying.
A young boy Mumei loves going to the dentist - sitting in the big chair and listening to the dentist speak to him.
Mumei tells the dentist he likes worms much more than milk.
The dentist then goes into a monologue about the brain and the ‘other brain’ - meaning the intestines.
I immediately thought about Mary Roach’s book “Gulp”.
I found it interesting that this ‘is’ supposed to be a futuristic science fiction book -
But from my nutritional reading today there’s nothing futuristic at all about what the author said about the ‘brain-of-the-intestine’, reflecting the condition of a persons physical health being more accurate than the upper brain itself. The author’s futuristic knowledge- has turned out to be quite truthful according to medical research today.
Medical scientists have already proven that the people’s condition of the intestines affects the health of many other vital organs in our body....but I enjoyed this part of the story... it was totally engaging.
I like the interaction between this impressionable young boy and his intrigue with this dentist.
I enjoy Japanese books. I expect their stories to be ‘different’. I don’t expect to understand everything ...( which I didn’t in this slim book), and I liked some parts more than others - rather understood some parts more than others.....
but I enjoyed the the characters, and the whimsical prose.
Mumei - sweet - wise - and fragile is the great-great grandson of Yoshiro - who, like the dentist, is also over 100 years old. This story mostly follows their relationship.
We get to look at what is happening to the younger generation. We can see how much they have lost.
I thought about the younger generation today -and how much more challenging it is for many of them today to ‘thrive’ financially- than in generations past. Everything seems harder ( a shrinking society on many levels)
The under-current atmosphere in this story was frightening, sinister, and mysterious, but the storytelling relationships between the characters were charming & sweet.
This book looks at morality:
...differently than Atul Gawande’s book, ( totally different style), than “Being Mortal”....
But in both books we can’t help but think about aging, frailty, death, one’s declining years, and a life with meaning.
Compelling thoughts linger.....
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor meltdown in 2011... was a major accident by the international atomic Energy Agency.
This national trauma was inspire by the Yoko Tawada in writing this story. Her book gives us a bleak look at a diminished world.
3.7 stars
As a science-fiction book - we immediately suspend belief... we learn this generation has pretty much stopped dying.
A young boy Mumei loves going to the dentist - sitting in the big chair and listening to the dentist speak to him.
Mumei tells the dentist he likes worms much more than milk.
The dentist then goes into a monologue about the brain and the ‘other brain’ - meaning the intestines.
I immediately thought about Mary Roach’s book “Gulp”.
I found it interesting that this ‘is’ supposed to be a futuristic science fiction book -
But from my nutritional reading today there’s nothing futuristic at all about what the author said about the ‘brain-of-the-intestine’, reflecting the condition of a persons physical health being more accurate than the upper brain itself. The author’s futuristic knowledge- has turned out to be quite truthful according to medical research today.
Medical scientists have already proven that the people’s condition of the intestines affects the health of many other vital organs in our body....but I enjoyed this part of the story... it was totally engaging.
I like the interaction between this impressionable young boy and his intrigue with this dentist.
I enjoy Japanese books. I expect their stories to be ‘different’. I don’t expect to understand everything ...( which I didn’t in this slim book), and I liked some parts more than others - rather understood some parts more than others.....
but I enjoyed the the characters, and the whimsical prose.
Mumei - sweet - wise - and fragile is the great-great grandson of Yoshiro - who, like the dentist, is also over 100 years old. This story mostly follows their relationship.
We get to look at what is happening to the younger generation. We can see how much they have lost.
I thought about the younger generation today -and how much more challenging it is for many of them today to ‘thrive’ financially- than in generations past. Everything seems harder ( a shrinking society on many levels)
The under-current atmosphere in this story was frightening, sinister, and mysterious, but the storytelling relationships between the characters were charming & sweet.
This book looks at morality:
...differently than Atul Gawande’s book, ( totally different style), than “Being Mortal”....
But in both books we can’t help but think about aging, frailty, death, one’s declining years, and a life with meaning.
Compelling thoughts linger.....
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor meltdown in 2011... was a major accident by the international atomic Energy Agency.
This national trauma was inspire by the Yoko Tawada in writing this story. Her book gives us a bleak look at a diminished world.
3.7 stars
April 24, 2018
!! NOW AVAILABLE !!
”For an old man like Yoshiro, time after death no longer existed. The aged could not die; along with the gift of everlasting life, they were burdened with terrible task of watching their great-grandchildren die.”
Set in the Japan of the future, this story focuses on Yoshiro and his great-grandson, Mumei. What has transpired in the past is vaguely touched on, but never really fully explained. Countries are no longer in communication with one another - the whole world has changed. The older generation can’t die, the younger generations struggle to thrive.
”As a child he had assumed the goal of medicine was to keep bodies alive forever; he had never considered the pain of not being able to die.”
There are almost no animals; there are dogs which one can rent for a run, a “lope.” An end-of-the-world scenario.
I can’t say that I ‘loved’ this, or even ‘enjoyed’ reading it. It seemed disjointed, which seemed to be intentional - but it didn’t make it more or less enjoyable even thinking that was a possibility. It had me contemplating what her message was, and there were some moments where I recognized the message she was trying to relay. Commentaries on the overly-politically-correct attempts to please all. The renaming of holidays to achieve this.
”’Labor Day’ became ‘Being Alive is Enough Day.’”
I’m not the target audience for this, but I’m also not sure who is. It felt as though the author wrote this only for her own entertainment, that it wasn’t really meant to be enjoyed or even necessarily appreciated by others, just a message to be conveyed.
Pub Date: 24 APR 2018
Many thanks for the ARC provided by New Directions / W.W. Norton & Company
”For an old man like Yoshiro, time after death no longer existed. The aged could not die; along with the gift of everlasting life, they were burdened with terrible task of watching their great-grandchildren die.”
Set in the Japan of the future, this story focuses on Yoshiro and his great-grandson, Mumei. What has transpired in the past is vaguely touched on, but never really fully explained. Countries are no longer in communication with one another - the whole world has changed. The older generation can’t die, the younger generations struggle to thrive.
”As a child he had assumed the goal of medicine was to keep bodies alive forever; he had never considered the pain of not being able to die.”
There are almost no animals; there are dogs which one can rent for a run, a “lope.” An end-of-the-world scenario.
I can’t say that I ‘loved’ this, or even ‘enjoyed’ reading it. It seemed disjointed, which seemed to be intentional - but it didn’t make it more or less enjoyable even thinking that was a possibility. It had me contemplating what her message was, and there were some moments where I recognized the message she was trying to relay. Commentaries on the overly-politically-correct attempts to please all. The renaming of holidays to achieve this.
”’Labor Day’ became ‘Being Alive is Enough Day.’”
I’m not the target audience for this, but I’m also not sure who is. It felt as though the author wrote this only for her own entertainment, that it wasn’t really meant to be enjoyed or even necessarily appreciated by others, just a message to be conveyed.
Pub Date: 24 APR 2018
Many thanks for the ARC provided by New Directions / W.W. Norton & Company
December 15, 2018
This is a strange short novel, a near future Japan that has once again shut itself off from the world, after environmental issues have caused the elderly to live longer while the children seem unsustainable.
To me this novel connects to The Vegetarian by Han Kang and Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. The strangeness, the environmental impact causing a change in behavior, the inability the humans in the stories have to change what feels inevitable.
To me this novel connects to The Vegetarian by Han Kang and Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. The strangeness, the environmental impact causing a change in behavior, the inability the humans in the stories have to change what feels inevitable.
November 15, 2018
Now - under the better US English title The Emissary - winner of the first National Book Award for translated literature.
The aged could not die; along with the gift of everlasting life, they were burdened with terrible task of watching their great-grandchildren die.
The Japanese novelist Yōko Tawada writes, unusually in both German and Japanese. Her previous novel in English translation, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, rendered from the German by the excellent Susan Bernofsky. featured strongly in awards: winning the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, at the time of this review shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, and was also longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award Longlist, and a nominee for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize.
The Emissary (my preferred English language title - see below) is from a Japanese language original, but the translation by Margaret Mitsutani (who translated Kenzaburō Ōe's An Echo of Heaven as well as a previous Tawada novel) is of an equally high standard.
'Still in his blue silk pyjamas, Mumei sat with his bottom flat on the tatami. Perhaps it was his head, much too large for his slender long neck, that made him look like a baby bird. Hairs fine as silk threads stuck to his scalp, damp with sweat. His eyes nearly shut, he moved his head as if searching the air, trying to catch on his tympanic membrane the scraping of footsteps on gravel. The footsteps grew louder, then stopped. The sliding door rattled like a freight train, and as Mumei opened up his eyes, morning light, yellow as melted dandelions, poured in. The boy threw back his shoulders, puffed out his chest and stuck out both his arms like a bird spreading its wings.'
The Emissary tells the story of a centenarian Yoshiro and his great-grandson Mumei, set in a near-future Japan. A combination of both natural disaster, an earthquake with echoes of that in Saramago's The Stone Raft which has moved the islands of Japan further from the Asian mainland, and unspecified man-made ecological catastrophe's has led to a world rather different to ours today. The elderly generation seem to be immortal (or at least none have died) while in contrast the young are weak and deformed - typically wheelchair bound by their mid-teens and with short lifespans.
'The baker was “young elderly,” a phrase that had once cracked people up but was now standard usage. People weren’t even called “middle-aged elderly” nowadays until they were well into their nineties, and the baker was barely into his late seventies.
...
The names of some of the older holidays were changed: “Respect for the Aged Day” became “Encouragement for the Aged Day,” while “Children’s Day ” was now “Apologize to the Children Day”; “Sports Day” was changed to “Body Day” to avoid upsetting children who were not growing up big and strong.
...
A popular manga entitled A Message from the Sea Breeze , about a foot messenger with the legs of a Japanese antelope and a map of every town in the country in his head, inspired lots of children to dream of becoming foot messengers when they grew up, though the general deterioration in physical strength among the young would make that impossible — in the near future, young people would probably all work in offices and physical labor would be left to the elderly.
Don't expect from the novel any rationale for how this all works. This is speculative fiction but in the literary rather than genre sense where, for good or ill (good in my view), the focus in not on creation of a coherent world but rather a metaphorical literary device. Similarly the perspective is narrowed to that of a few characters - we get little view of the issues in wider society (rather like Saramago's Blindness versus his later sequel of sorts Seeing).
Indeed rather quirky metaphors are par for the course in the novel:
'The dentist explained that diarrhea is the intestines ’ method of getting rid of whatever they decide is poisonous as quickly and efficiently as possible. The brain in the head is well known, the dentist went on, but the intestines are actually another brain, and when these two brains disagree the intestines always get the upper hand. This is why the brain is sometimes called the Upper House, and the intestines the Lower House. Because Lower House elections are held often, it is generally believed that it’s the Lower House that truly reflects shifts in public opinion. In the same way, because the contents of the intestines are constantly changing, the intestines reflect a person’s physical condition more accurately than the brain.
dietary issues being a key concern in this world, both the fragile digestive system of the young and the contamination of the food supply, Mumei's teeth also suffering from calcium deficiency.
"According to one theory, it’s best to get your calcium from the bones of fish and animals. But they have to be from before the earth became irreversibly contaminated. So some people say we should dig way, way down underground to find dinosaur bones. In Hokkaido there are already shops that sell powder from ground Naumann Mammoth bones they’ve dug up there.”
In this new world, Japan has reverted to Edo-era isolationism - one of the novel's seeming (and prescient - this was published in 2014) themes - being the rise of political nationalism. As Yoshido tries to explain:
'“Every country has serious problems, so to keep those problems from spreading all around the world, they decided that each country should solve its own problems by itself. Remember when I took you to the Showa-Heisei Museum? All the rooms were separated by steel doors, so if a fire starts in one room it can’t spread to the next one.”
“It is better that way?”
“I don’t know if it’s better or not. But at least this way there’s less danger of Japanese companies making money off the poor people living in other countries. And there are probably fewer chances for foreign companies to make money from the crisis we’re having here in Japan, too.”
Mumei looked puzzled, as if maybe he sort of understood, but not quite. Yoshiro was always careful not to tell him that he didn’t really support Japan’s isolation policy.'
Language is key to the novel including the deliberate erasure of foreign, particularly English, loan words.
'The ability to understand even a little English was evidence of old age. As studying English was now prohibited, young people didn’t know even simple words like on and off. It was okay to study other languages such as Tagalog, German, Swahili, or Czechoslovakian.'
Leading to some new words....
'Long ago , this sort of purposeless running had been referred to as jogging, but with foreign words falling out of use, it was now called loping down, an expression that had started out as a joke meaning “if you lope your blood pressure goes down,” but everybody called it that these days. And kids Mumei’s age would never have dreamt that adding just an e in front of it the word lope could conjure up visions of a young woman climbing down a ladder in the middle of the night to run away with her lover.'
and deliberately encouraged misreadings
'The Tengu Company was based in Iwate Prefecture, and inside each shoe Iwate was written in India ink with a brush, followed by the kana for ma and de. * The younger generation, who no longer studied English, interpreted the “made” on old “Made in Japan” labels in their own way.'
with a footnote: 'The Japanese word made (pronounced mah-day) means “to” or “until,” so Iwate made would mean “to Iwate.”'
Others refers to Chinese symbols:
'Children without parents had long since ceased to be called “orphans”; they were now referred to as doku ritsu jido, “independent children.” Because the Chinese character for doku looks like a dog separated from the pack who survives by attaching itself to a human being and never leaving his side, Yoshiro had never felt comfortable with the phrase.'
But in a world where the young have no knowledge of non-Japanese culture, Mumei is special - and hence perhaps suitable to be an emissary:
'Where could the boy have picked up such a foreign-sounding sentence, when books — even picture books — were no longer being translated?'
The translation issues indeed start with the title. The Japanese word used for Emissary is phonetically kentôshi, literally "ambassadors dispatched to Tang' (per https://wiki.samurai-archives.com/ind...) and, in the story, an idea develops to send one of the young people as a emissary to China. That word is normally written 遣唐使 but Tawada has rendered her title in different characters 献灯使, which carries a literal implication of 'bearer of light.' The subtle change is a little lost in the English-US title; but at least it preserves a key part of the sense - bizzarely the English-UK version of the novel has gone for The Last Children of Tokyo, which is perhaps more attention grabbing and representative of the story, but not what the original was called at all.
The next arises in the first line. In Japanese Mumei's name is written 無名 which could be literally rendered 'no name', but is usually used for unknown/anonymous (as in for example 無名 戦士の墓 - 'Tomb of the Unknown Soldier'.) The English reader, as pointed out in the excellent Complete Review review (http://www.complete-review.com/review...), has to wait until about halfway through for his great-grandfather to explain the, deliberate, choice of name while one assumes readers of the original would immediately have been alert to the nuance.
But otherwise Mitsutani copes very well, resorting to footnotes only twice (once mentioned above) and using a good blend of direct translation, adaption and judicious inclusion of untranslated (but phonetically rendered) words, even once some Japanese characters.
Overall:
The writing in the novel is excellent, although it did feel that for a Western audience it is packaged to tick the post-Murakami quirky and twee box. And the translation copes brilliantly with many tricky issues. And for such a short novel it manages to touch on three key mega-trends - the ageing Japanese population, isolationist nationalism and environmental degradation.
But ultimately this fell between the two stools of a short-story and a fully-realised novel, too long to be the former but much too under-developed to be the latter. Worthwhile but a little unsatisfying - 3 stars.
Thanks to Netgalley / Portabello for the ARC.
A recommended review:
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/b...
The aged could not die; along with the gift of everlasting life, they were burdened with terrible task of watching their great-grandchildren die.
The Japanese novelist Yōko Tawada writes, unusually in both German and Japanese. Her previous novel in English translation, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, rendered from the German by the excellent Susan Bernofsky. featured strongly in awards: winning the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, at the time of this review shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, and was also longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award Longlist, and a nominee for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize.
The Emissary (my preferred English language title - see below) is from a Japanese language original, but the translation by Margaret Mitsutani (who translated Kenzaburō Ōe's An Echo of Heaven as well as a previous Tawada novel) is of an equally high standard.
'Still in his blue silk pyjamas, Mumei sat with his bottom flat on the tatami. Perhaps it was his head, much too large for his slender long neck, that made him look like a baby bird. Hairs fine as silk threads stuck to his scalp, damp with sweat. His eyes nearly shut, he moved his head as if searching the air, trying to catch on his tympanic membrane the scraping of footsteps on gravel. The footsteps grew louder, then stopped. The sliding door rattled like a freight train, and as Mumei opened up his eyes, morning light, yellow as melted dandelions, poured in. The boy threw back his shoulders, puffed out his chest and stuck out both his arms like a bird spreading its wings.'
The Emissary tells the story of a centenarian Yoshiro and his great-grandson Mumei, set in a near-future Japan. A combination of both natural disaster, an earthquake with echoes of that in Saramago's The Stone Raft which has moved the islands of Japan further from the Asian mainland, and unspecified man-made ecological catastrophe's has led to a world rather different to ours today. The elderly generation seem to be immortal (or at least none have died) while in contrast the young are weak and deformed - typically wheelchair bound by their mid-teens and with short lifespans.
'The baker was “young elderly,” a phrase that had once cracked people up but was now standard usage. People weren’t even called “middle-aged elderly” nowadays until they were well into their nineties, and the baker was barely into his late seventies.
...
The names of some of the older holidays were changed: “Respect for the Aged Day” became “Encouragement for the Aged Day,” while “Children’s Day ” was now “Apologize to the Children Day”; “Sports Day” was changed to “Body Day” to avoid upsetting children who were not growing up big and strong.
...
A popular manga entitled A Message from the Sea Breeze , about a foot messenger with the legs of a Japanese antelope and a map of every town in the country in his head, inspired lots of children to dream of becoming foot messengers when they grew up, though the general deterioration in physical strength among the young would make that impossible — in the near future, young people would probably all work in offices and physical labor would be left to the elderly.
Don't expect from the novel any rationale for how this all works. This is speculative fiction but in the literary rather than genre sense where, for good or ill (good in my view), the focus in not on creation of a coherent world but rather a metaphorical literary device. Similarly the perspective is narrowed to that of a few characters - we get little view of the issues in wider society (rather like Saramago's Blindness versus his later sequel of sorts Seeing).
Indeed rather quirky metaphors are par for the course in the novel:
'The dentist explained that diarrhea is the intestines ’ method of getting rid of whatever they decide is poisonous as quickly and efficiently as possible. The brain in the head is well known, the dentist went on, but the intestines are actually another brain, and when these two brains disagree the intestines always get the upper hand. This is why the brain is sometimes called the Upper House, and the intestines the Lower House. Because Lower House elections are held often, it is generally believed that it’s the Lower House that truly reflects shifts in public opinion. In the same way, because the contents of the intestines are constantly changing, the intestines reflect a person’s physical condition more accurately than the brain.
dietary issues being a key concern in this world, both the fragile digestive system of the young and the contamination of the food supply, Mumei's teeth also suffering from calcium deficiency.
"According to one theory, it’s best to get your calcium from the bones of fish and animals. But they have to be from before the earth became irreversibly contaminated. So some people say we should dig way, way down underground to find dinosaur bones. In Hokkaido there are already shops that sell powder from ground Naumann Mammoth bones they’ve dug up there.”
In this new world, Japan has reverted to Edo-era isolationism - one of the novel's seeming (and prescient - this was published in 2014) themes - being the rise of political nationalism. As Yoshido tries to explain:
'“Every country has serious problems, so to keep those problems from spreading all around the world, they decided that each country should solve its own problems by itself. Remember when I took you to the Showa-Heisei Museum? All the rooms were separated by steel doors, so if a fire starts in one room it can’t spread to the next one.”
“It is better that way?”
“I don’t know if it’s better or not. But at least this way there’s less danger of Japanese companies making money off the poor people living in other countries. And there are probably fewer chances for foreign companies to make money from the crisis we’re having here in Japan, too.”
Mumei looked puzzled, as if maybe he sort of understood, but not quite. Yoshiro was always careful not to tell him that he didn’t really support Japan’s isolation policy.'
Language is key to the novel including the deliberate erasure of foreign, particularly English, loan words.
'The ability to understand even a little English was evidence of old age. As studying English was now prohibited, young people didn’t know even simple words like on and off. It was okay to study other languages such as Tagalog, German, Swahili, or Czechoslovakian.'
Leading to some new words....
'Long ago , this sort of purposeless running had been referred to as jogging, but with foreign words falling out of use, it was now called loping down, an expression that had started out as a joke meaning “if you lope your blood pressure goes down,” but everybody called it that these days. And kids Mumei’s age would never have dreamt that adding just an e in front of it the word lope could conjure up visions of a young woman climbing down a ladder in the middle of the night to run away with her lover.'
and deliberately encouraged misreadings
'The Tengu Company was based in Iwate Prefecture, and inside each shoe Iwate was written in India ink with a brush, followed by the kana for ma and de. * The younger generation, who no longer studied English, interpreted the “made” on old “Made in Japan” labels in their own way.'
with a footnote: 'The Japanese word made (pronounced mah-day) means “to” or “until,” so Iwate made would mean “to Iwate.”'
Others refers to Chinese symbols:
'Children without parents had long since ceased to be called “orphans”; they were now referred to as doku ritsu jido, “independent children.” Because the Chinese character for doku looks like a dog separated from the pack who survives by attaching itself to a human being and never leaving his side, Yoshiro had never felt comfortable with the phrase.'
But in a world where the young have no knowledge of non-Japanese culture, Mumei is special - and hence perhaps suitable to be an emissary:
'Where could the boy have picked up such a foreign-sounding sentence, when books — even picture books — were no longer being translated?'
The translation issues indeed start with the title. The Japanese word used for Emissary is phonetically kentôshi, literally "ambassadors dispatched to Tang' (per https://wiki.samurai-archives.com/ind...) and, in the story, an idea develops to send one of the young people as a emissary to China. That word is normally written 遣唐使 but Tawada has rendered her title in different characters 献灯使, which carries a literal implication of 'bearer of light.' The subtle change is a little lost in the English-US title; but at least it preserves a key part of the sense - bizzarely the English-UK version of the novel has gone for The Last Children of Tokyo, which is perhaps more attention grabbing and representative of the story, but not what the original was called at all.
The next arises in the first line. In Japanese Mumei's name is written 無名 which could be literally rendered 'no name', but is usually used for unknown/anonymous (as in for example 無名 戦士の墓 - 'Tomb of the Unknown Soldier'.) The English reader, as pointed out in the excellent Complete Review review (http://www.complete-review.com/review...), has to wait until about halfway through for his great-grandfather to explain the, deliberate, choice of name while one assumes readers of the original would immediately have been alert to the nuance.
But otherwise Mitsutani copes very well, resorting to footnotes only twice (once mentioned above) and using a good blend of direct translation, adaption and judicious inclusion of untranslated (but phonetically rendered) words, even once some Japanese characters.
Overall:
The writing in the novel is excellent, although it did feel that for a Western audience it is packaged to tick the post-Murakami quirky and twee box. And the translation copes brilliantly with many tricky issues. And for such a short novel it manages to touch on three key mega-trends - the ageing Japanese population, isolationist nationalism and environmental degradation.
But ultimately this fell between the two stools of a short-story and a fully-realised novel, too long to be the former but much too under-developed to be the latter. Worthwhile but a little unsatisfying - 3 stars.
Thanks to Netgalley / Portabello for the ARC.
A recommended review:
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/b...
May 14, 2019
It became apparent rather early on, that I was going to have a profound difficulty in immersing myself in this story. The main issue that caused this, was the disjointed plot. There really was NO plot, and just when I thought one was starting up, it fell flat, and I was sitting there rolling my eyes.
The back cover I feel was misleading. I was promised to be enchanted, and unsettled, and frankly, I was neither of these. I was glad, however, once I had finished reading the final page. I mean, what was this book supposed to be about? There was a complete lack of character development, which obviously left me not really caring about them, and then we return to that odd, disjointed plot again, which was exasperating as hell.
There were some sparsely written sentences in here, that made me raise an eyebrow, and think "Hmm, that was an interesting sentence" but unfortunately, the sentence made little impact on me, because my mind was so exhausted attempting to figure out just what was going on.
I do feel this book could have had the potential to be something better than this, but instead I've finished this feeling disappointed and washed-out.
The back cover I feel was misleading. I was promised to be enchanted, and unsettled, and frankly, I was neither of these. I was glad, however, once I had finished reading the final page. I mean, what was this book supposed to be about? There was a complete lack of character development, which obviously left me not really caring about them, and then we return to that odd, disjointed plot again, which was exasperating as hell.
There were some sparsely written sentences in here, that made me raise an eyebrow, and think "Hmm, that was an interesting sentence" but unfortunately, the sentence made little impact on me, because my mind was so exhausted attempting to figure out just what was going on.
I do feel this book could have had the potential to be something better than this, but instead I've finished this feeling disappointed and washed-out.
December 14, 2018
The Emissary has a layer of whimsy that contradicts the horrors of the post-apocalyptic story it tells. This contradiction is compelling, but also distancing. Take away the whimsy and what's left reminds me of Ibuse's Black Rain, the story of a young woman's slow death from radiation poisoning following the bombing of Hiroshima, as told through her uncle's diaries. Both novels tell the story of a young person with no future, and of a civilization with no hope. They both beautifully capture the stoic-with-a-smile fatalism of Japanese culture, too, where people honor their obligations even in the most apocalyptic circumstances. But Ibuse's novel is almost unbearably truthful and intimate, whereas Tawada's has a sheen of light-hearted detachment. Ibuse's novel is unforgettable, and Tawada's novel never became more than a what-if exercise: interesting to read, full of fascinating detail about one possible future, but lacking any deeper follow-through to make it memorable.
January 6, 2021
With children like this having children of their own, it was no wonder the world was full of children. pg. 74
Great little book (138 pages), I've read it before and it is a book I really enjoy.
Sometimes I find it difficult to review great books. I don't know what to say except "This is SO good!" and "You should read it."
Yōko Tawada is a genius, frankly, and this book showcases that and her amazing writing style.
It takes place in the future: children are born sickly, are unable to walk by age 15, are weak, frail, and need constant care. Adults are the strong ones, especially the elderly, who get older and older without falling sick or getting weak. People are living into their 100s (109, 115) with no disease or weakening. The new generation isn't so lucky. The elderly are spry - running, working hard, long days, and raising their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
As a result of "the contamination," Japan has isolated itself, walled itself off from the outside world. So has almost every other country. It's 'for protection.' But not every Japanese person agrees with the government's isolationist policies.
The book focuses on Yoshiro, who is raising up his great-grandson. It devastates him to see his weak and suffering great-grandson, but the boy is cheerful and never complains. He always tries to cheer up his great-grandpa, who is one of the people who remembers how things were in the before-times.
It's clear that Yōko Tawada probably wrote this in a response to Fukushima Daiichi, but this is actually perfect reading for a pandemic. It fits in very nicely with what's going on now, in 2020.
Yōko Tawada's genius is in a.) her amazing writing skillz. She puts words together beautifully and makes reading a joy. And in b.) her ideas and concepts about the future and where things might end up. She's not writing a satire, but she's brushing up against one: exhibiting ideas in the vein of George Orwell or William Gibson.
We never truly know what the future might hold, and things we never foresee can one day become everyday mundane facts of life. Which this Covid-19 pandemic illustrates PERFECTLY and this chilling and tantalizing concept is captured in this novel. Yoshiro is living in a future he never could have imagined as a child or a teenager.
"Years ago when I used to go to New York to sell my knives it didn't seem far at all - distance is odd that way."
His voice dropped to a raspy whisper on "New York." There was a strange new law against saying the names of foreign cities out loud, and although no one had been prosecuted for breaking it yet, all the same people were very being careful. Nothing is more frightening than a law that has never been enforced. When the authorities want to throw someone in jail, all they have to do is suddenly arrest him for breaking a law that no one has bothered to obey yet. pg. 30
Yōko Tawada is smart. The book is smart. I recommend reading it.
The only drawback here is that it is not a traditionally plotted book. This book does not have a real conclusion or a true plot. Instead, it showcases a few days in this incredible future. People who enjoy a traditional story arc are not going to be happy with this one.
While it wasn't clear whether or not Yoshiro's generation would really have to live forever, for the time being they had definitely been robbed of death. Perhaps when their bodies had reached the end, even their fingers and toes worn down to nothing, their minds would hang on, refusing to shut down, writhing still inside immobile flesh. pg. 93
TL;DR I recommend this brilliant little book. Whether you stay for Yōko Tawada's beautiful writing or her thought-provoking ideas about the world around her and its possible future - there will be something for you to enjoy here. The only off-putting thing for some readers may be the book's lack of a traditional 'plot.' The book is worth reading and I encourage everyone to give Yōko Tawada's work a chance. You can get lost in this short, consuming, futuristic little novel. It's fascinating and you don't only have to rely on Yōko Tawada's ideas to keep you interested - she also writes skillfully.
NAMES IN THIS BOOK
ETA: UPDATE 01/06/21
"Years ago when I used to go to New York to sell my knives it didn't seem far at all - distance is odd that way."
His voice dropped to a raspy whisper on "New York." There was a strange new law against saying the names of foreign cities out loud, and although no one had been prosecuted for breaking it yet, all the same people were very being careful. Nothing is more frightening than a law that has never been enforced. When the authorities want to throw someone in jail, all they have to do is suddenly arrest him for breaking a law that no one has bothered to obey yet. pg. 30
Duterte retroactively enforcing a law against Maria Ressa. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/bu...
Great little book (138 pages), I've read it before and it is a book I really enjoy.
Sometimes I find it difficult to review great books. I don't know what to say except "This is SO good!" and "You should read it."
Yōko Tawada is a genius, frankly, and this book showcases that and her amazing writing style.
It takes place in the future: children are born sickly, are unable to walk by age 15, are weak, frail, and need constant care. Adults are the strong ones, especially the elderly, who get older and older without falling sick or getting weak. People are living into their 100s (109, 115) with no disease or weakening. The new generation isn't so lucky. The elderly are spry - running, working hard, long days, and raising their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
As a result of "the contamination," Japan has isolated itself, walled itself off from the outside world. So has almost every other country. It's 'for protection.' But not every Japanese person agrees with the government's isolationist policies.
The book focuses on Yoshiro, who is raising up his great-grandson. It devastates him to see his weak and suffering great-grandson, but the boy is cheerful and never complains. He always tries to cheer up his great-grandpa, who is one of the people who remembers how things were in the before-times.
It's clear that Yōko Tawada probably wrote this in a response to Fukushima Daiichi, but this is actually perfect reading for a pandemic. It fits in very nicely with what's going on now, in 2020.
Yōko Tawada's genius is in a.) her amazing writing skillz. She puts words together beautifully and makes reading a joy. And in b.) her ideas and concepts about the future and where things might end up. She's not writing a satire, but she's brushing up against one: exhibiting ideas in the vein of George Orwell or William Gibson.
We never truly know what the future might hold, and things we never foresee can one day become everyday mundane facts of life. Which this Covid-19 pandemic illustrates PERFECTLY and this chilling and tantalizing concept is captured in this novel. Yoshiro is living in a future he never could have imagined as a child or a teenager.
"Years ago when I used to go to New York to sell my knives it didn't seem far at all - distance is odd that way."
His voice dropped to a raspy whisper on "New York." There was a strange new law against saying the names of foreign cities out loud, and although no one had been prosecuted for breaking it yet, all the same people were very being careful. Nothing is more frightening than a law that has never been enforced. When the authorities want to throw someone in jail, all they have to do is suddenly arrest him for breaking a law that no one has bothered to obey yet. pg. 30
Yōko Tawada is smart. The book is smart. I recommend reading it.
The only drawback here is that it is not a traditionally plotted book. This book does not have a real conclusion or a true plot. Instead, it showcases a few days in this incredible future. People who enjoy a traditional story arc are not going to be happy with this one.
While it wasn't clear whether or not Yoshiro's generation would really have to live forever, for the time being they had definitely been robbed of death. Perhaps when their bodies had reached the end, even their fingers and toes worn down to nothing, their minds would hang on, refusing to shut down, writhing still inside immobile flesh. pg. 93
TL;DR I recommend this brilliant little book. Whether you stay for Yōko Tawada's beautiful writing or her thought-provoking ideas about the world around her and its possible future - there will be something for you to enjoy here. The only off-putting thing for some readers may be the book's lack of a traditional 'plot.' The book is worth reading and I encourage everyone to give Yōko Tawada's work a chance. You can get lost in this short, consuming, futuristic little novel. It's fascinating and you don't only have to rely on Yōko Tawada's ideas to keep you interested - she also writes skillfully.
NAMES IN THIS BOOK
ETA: UPDATE 01/06/21
"Years ago when I used to go to New York to sell my knives it didn't seem far at all - distance is odd that way."
His voice dropped to a raspy whisper on "New York." There was a strange new law against saying the names of foreign cities out loud, and although no one had been prosecuted for breaking it yet, all the same people were very being careful. Nothing is more frightening than a law that has never been enforced. When the authorities want to throw someone in jail, all they have to do is suddenly arrest him for breaking a law that no one has bothered to obey yet. pg. 30
Duterte retroactively enforcing a law against Maria Ressa. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/bu...
June 27, 2019
What a strange little book. It revolves around a man and his great-grandson. Presumably some sort of cataclysmic event has occurred that has caused Japan to shut itself away from the outside world. Now the elderly are living for longer—upwards of 100 years—while youth are dying at a young age and becoming quite frail. Basically this just chronicles a little bit of the two main characters' lives amidst these new circumstances. It was intriguing and quite easy to read, but didn't really leave me with much.
As a reviewer in the New York Times said: "Tawada seems content to evoke mood, to polish her sentences to a high sheen. Her language has never been so arresting. But as Virginia Woolf wrote, novels are composed of paragraphs, not sentences. “The Emissary” is stalled there, at the level of a flickering brilliance that never kindles into more. From a writer with Tawada’s gifts, mere beauty can be a disappointment."
I'd have to agree; but maybe this just isn't the place to start in Tawada's oeurve. I'm willing to give her a second go nonetheless.
As a reviewer in the New York Times said: "Tawada seems content to evoke mood, to polish her sentences to a high sheen. Her language has never been so arresting. But as Virginia Woolf wrote, novels are composed of paragraphs, not sentences. “The Emissary” is stalled there, at the level of a flickering brilliance that never kindles into more. From a writer with Tawada’s gifts, mere beauty can be a disappointment."
I'd have to agree; but maybe this just isn't the place to start in Tawada's oeurve. I'm willing to give her a second go nonetheless.
May 5, 2021
I only ended up finishing this because it was so short. And even then it was a struggle. Apparently this is about a near future Japan that's closed off from the rest of the world due to some kind of environmental/political breakdown. The population are not doing well, children are born increasingly weak and fragile while the old elderly are still strong and healthy.
90% of the story is about one of these old elderly men who is looking after his great grandson. That's about it. We don't really get any idea of why Japan is like it is, or how it's different from our world. At some point it's mentioned that electronics aren't used anymore, or plants have mutated or that certain words have become taboo...but we don't get of an explanation beyond this. I did like the small play on words and characters to explain the evolving language of the country however I do think this was maybe lost in translation a little too and probably would have felt more intrinsic to the plot if read in the original language. I also liked the obvious comparisons to Japan's ageing population and the strain this is putting on their economy and younger generations. This story literally turns this concept in its head, inviting conversations into life after retirement, and the guilt felt by the elderly population as they are the cause of their descendants pain and suffering. However, for the most part however it's just confusing, and the plot is so slow paced that I found my interest waning very quickly.
I also don't think we really got any insight into who these characters were beyond the superficial. Character development is minimal, with a couple of scenes that delve into backstory but that's it. I had no strong emotional attachment to anyone and as a result I just didn't care unfortunately.
Not one for me I'm afraid.
90% of the story is about one of these old elderly men who is looking after his great grandson. That's about it. We don't really get any idea of why Japan is like it is, or how it's different from our world. At some point it's mentioned that electronics aren't used anymore, or plants have mutated or that certain words have become taboo...but we don't get of an explanation beyond this. I did like the small play on words and characters to explain the evolving language of the country however I do think this was maybe lost in translation a little too and probably would have felt more intrinsic to the plot if read in the original language. I also liked the obvious comparisons to Japan's ageing population and the strain this is putting on their economy and younger generations. This story literally turns this concept in its head, inviting conversations into life after retirement, and the guilt felt by the elderly population as they are the cause of their descendants pain and suffering. However, for the most part however it's just confusing, and the plot is so slow paced that I found my interest waning very quickly.
I also don't think we really got any insight into who these characters were beyond the superficial. Character development is minimal, with a couple of scenes that delve into backstory but that's it. I had no strong emotional attachment to anyone and as a result I just didn't care unfortunately.
Not one for me I'm afraid.
April 29, 2020
Çok sonranın değil, yarının distopyası.
İçinde bulunduğumuz virüslü günlerde okumak farklı bir gerçeklik hissini beraberinde getirdi. Anlatılan dünyayı ve yazarın öngörüsünü çok beğendim. Fakat edebi anlamda örgüde büyük boşlukları olan bir kitaptı. Yazarın tercihi olduğunu düşünüyorum fakat beni biraz atmosfere yabancılaştırdı.
Hüseyin Can Erkin Hoca yine muhteşem bir çeviriye imza atmış. Emeğine sağlık.
Siren'in özeni ve Nazlım Dumlu imzalı kapak ise çok kere kalp.
Multi-real distopya okumak isteyenlere mutlaka öneririm.
İyi okumalar.
İçinde bulunduğumuz virüslü günlerde okumak farklı bir gerçeklik hissini beraberinde getirdi. Anlatılan dünyayı ve yazarın öngörüsünü çok beğendim. Fakat edebi anlamda örgüde büyük boşlukları olan bir kitaptı. Yazarın tercihi olduğunu düşünüyorum fakat beni biraz atmosfere yabancılaştırdı.
Hüseyin Can Erkin Hoca yine muhteşem bir çeviriye imza atmış. Emeğine sağlık.
Siren'in özeni ve Nazlım Dumlu imzalı kapak ise çok kere kalp.
Multi-real distopya okumak isteyenlere mutlaka öneririm.
İyi okumalar.
February 5, 2022
I was not in the mood for this odd post-apocalyptic novella set in Japan. Tawada details how the world has changed for 108-year old Yoshiro and his sickly great-grandson. Through their daily routine and Yoshiro's reminiscences we learn that the future is grim - most food is poisonous, children are frail with soft bones and teeth and so forth. An interesting set-up but what is the point? It goes nowhere.
April 19, 2020
"Kendisi çocuk kalmış insanlar çocuk yapmaya kalktıkları için dünya çocuktan geçilmiyordu."
Kitabı okurken içinde bulundukları izolasyonun bizde de kalıcı olabilme ihtimalini düşündüm bir an. Uzun zaman geçmiş, artık sebepleri unutulmuş... Dünyanın geneli böyle dışls bağlantı kopmuş, teknoloji yok. Belirsizlik hakim.
Bir felaket gelmiş ve bir yokluk içinde yaşıyorlar. Meyve bahçesi fikri fabrikadan ibaret.
Yaşlılara ölüm uğramıyor, yaşadıkça güçleniyor. Çocuklarsa çok güçsüz, ömürleri kısa...
Güçlü bir distopya.
⭐
Kitabı okurken içinde bulundukları izolasyonun bizde de kalıcı olabilme ihtimalini düşündüm bir an. Uzun zaman geçmiş, artık sebepleri unutulmuş... Dünyanın geneli böyle dışls bağlantı kopmuş, teknoloji yok. Belirsizlik hakim.
Bir felaket gelmiş ve bir yokluk içinde yaşıyorlar. Meyve bahçesi fikri fabrikadan ibaret.
Yaşlılara ölüm uğramıyor, yaşadıkça güçleniyor. Çocuklarsa çok güçsüz, ömürleri kısa...
Güçlü bir distopya.
⭐
February 18, 2019
The Last Children of Tokyo (UK title); The Emissary (US title)
A curious blend of dystopia and utopia, extrapolating rather obviously from recent events and trends, set in a contaminated future Japan in which the elderly are super-fit and support everyone, and children plagued by health problems. In its world, most countries are isolationist. For its subject, it has an unusually peaceful and quirky tone and atmosphere, one which may be familiar from light Japanese literary fiction.
Many details of its world-building do not fit together logically, and are far from hard SF - but it makes a refreshing change from the standard projections of future technology and society in scenarios of environmental degeneration, which become hackneyed once you have read enough of them, and which are often American, or American-influenced. I was especially alert to the material and world-building aspects of Tawada's novel because recently, I attempted to plan a story starting in 2095; I had wanted to push past the sometimes lazy received wisdom of the usual American collapsitarian guys, and I ideally wanted to be able to have a logical story behind every object around my characters and everything they knew and thought. Where and when was this made, with materials from where and how did it reach them, or how has it survived? Where did they learn what they know? What influences their words and accents? What communications or media reach them and by what logistical and material means? How would social relations develop with and without various items, taking into account that this is also development from the present, not just a reversion to the past? It was overwhelming to try and work out such stuff along with questioning a lot of material I'd previously read, and I felt a surprising sense of relief at some of the cop-outs involved in Tawada's strangely cosy dystopia, in which it's not terribly clear how the economy works, and in where a Japan that apparently does not import anything from abroad nevertheless has solar powered items (although not in vast numbers), and advanced medical care. There's also what seems to be an entirely new type of trade, in which some countries (including South Africa and India - two of the BRICS group, you may notice) export language, but it's never explained what this entails.
The novel's world attains a combination of technology usages which would be particularly desirable to left-leaning environmentalists, via a sleight of hand combining the isolationist policy and a fantastical shift in public opinion and science in which "Electrical appliances had met with disapproval ever since electric current was discovered to cause nervous disorders, numbness in the extremities, and insomnia — a condition generally known as bzzt-bzzt syndrome." (The author evidently recognises how central public demand is for consumer electricals, and that trying to get rid of them with legislation would be incredibly unpopular.) It would have seemed more plausible if this condition only affected the children, who are all very delicate and afflicted with multiple novel medical problems. Or perhaps it's connected to nuclear radiation, which is hinted as the cause of the major disaster in the recent past. But the revolt against electrical machinery seems to be universal, and as a result, the only household appliances are now solar-powered refrigerators (I wonder if Tawada also loves those moments when every machine in the home is switched off apart from the fridge freezer). Almost everything else - other than high-tech disability aids and the remaining, shambolic, public transport - has seen a return to pre-industrial manual technology such as cloth, wood and horse-drawn carts, and it's very common to employ cleaners. (There are many parallels to the appropriate technology movement of the 1970s, which has been having a small revival in recent years.) Manual labour is highly respected, and people such as academics also take turns doing work like cleaning school toilets. Resources such as paper have to be treated carefully and there is no unnecessary consumerist tat, the product of the old "global rat race in which huge corporations turned underground resources into anything they could sell at inhuman speeds while ruthlessly competing to keep the lowest production costs".
It is not only different forms of work that are equally respected: the society has abolished the "distinction between useful and useless people" and children are discouraged from using expressions that might even tangentially support it, such as "putting people to a lot of trouble". All the children seem to be treasured by society at large, and by the grandparents and great-grandparents who look after them, and unlike in the real world for all but the very rich with complex medical issues and disabilities, they never have to contend with anyone misunderstanding or disbelieving their problems, or with delays or blocks to accessing any treatments available in their country. The children tend to be calm and good-natured, but rather than this being some sort of stereotype of disabled people as patient martyrs, I see this as relating to the huge difference in stress levels I've seen between disabled people who have to manage on UK and US benefits and other insecure resources, versus those who have comfortable private income or come from countries with the best welfare states, such as an old online friend from Norway.
This level of respect and provision on an apparently national scale is a relatively recent phenomenon in recorded human history, but as far as other aspects of the book's society are concerned - the isolationism, the pre-industrial technology and the frugal use of resources - it was no surprise when references to the Edo Period (1603-1868) began to appear more and more frequently. From the first few pages onwards, it had already looked as if the novel was alluding to the Edo, and probably to modern usages of the period, where the Edo is held up as a real-life model of a sustainable society: see for example here, here, here, or here, and more informally in the environmental blogosphere. This page mentions in addition that "Today, the Japanese have an insatiable appetite for all things Edo. This goes deeper than the daily long lines outside the Edo-Tokyo Museum or the very popular historical dramas on TV every Sunday evening." Tawada refers to historically inaccurate usages of the Edo for political ends, when the wise great-grandfather protagonist tries to contradict them: " When Yoshiro submitted an essay entitled “Japan Was Not Isolated” to the newspaper, they refused to publish it. He wrote it to show how strong Japan’s connections to the outside world had been during the Edo period, through the channels of Holland and China, but the newspaper’s official scholar refused to give it his stamp of approval. He decided to hang onto the manuscript until the next time a magazine asked him for a contribution, yet strangely enough, all those requests from magazines dried up completely after that."
The allusions to the Edo may be clear, and the contaminated land and health effects strongly suggest radiation (not to mention the blurb's mention of Fukushima) but exactly how and why things became this way is never really explained, and the government is shadowy and faceless - no one is quite sure where it is based any more, and no politicians are ever named, although there are allusions to capricious changes, and policies restricting freedom of speech on certain topics, or the ability to settle outside your home region. This vagueness often reminded me of another odd and not altogether logical literary dystopia, J by Howard Jacobson. However the repressions and changes rarely seem as frightening as in J. Other than people being anxious not to mention a few topics, chiefly to do with abroad, society remains mysteriously ordered, peaceful and in a way friendly, for a country which has gone through major upheaval and has next to no visible police - there isn't the suspicion that anyone may denounce you, which stalks fully totalitarian dystopias. (The police are privatised and now mostly concern themselves with their brass bands.) Foreign words are strictly to be avoided (though writing should be in Chinese characters), likewise mannerisms (waving is now up and down, like a maneki neko, not side-to-side), and travel abroad is forbidden. However, a mixed-race school teacher, Mr Yonatani, does not appear to face discrimination. "Though his mother was so attached to the name Yonatan that she wanted to keep it as her own, at a time when having non-Japanese relatives was enough to bring you under suspicion, such a foreign-sounding surname was sure to be a strike against her. She did, in fact, often feel she was being watched. She would come home to find signs of a break-in; even when nothing had been taken, the police would come round to investigate."
It's hard to tell what is intentional and what is accidental in the generally cosy and sometimes whimsical style of this book. Sometimes we are told that aspects of Yoshiro's life are unpleasant or sad - and it might sound boring to a reader in their twenties - but his life of enduring good physical healthy, jogging with dogs (rented), trying to get decent fruit from the market, having someone to look after for whom state services provide well, and apparently not having to worry about money sounds pretty pleasant compared with a lot of people's lives now, even if there are a few things he needs to be careful not to say. His great-grandson Mumei has a lot of medical problems, but until late in the book, physical pain and discomfort is only rarely mentioned. Before that they seem like logistical matters, described in such a way that the reader doesn't feel them (nor the physical aspects of helping) - and because most kids have similar problems, and schools always have doctors on hand, he doesn't feel unusual or left out. The way the characters are narrated is strangely unembodied. (After mention of Mumei's digestive problems, I thought another oblique Edo reference might appear - the He-gassen or fart scrolls [N.B. link includes thumbnails of pics which in close up are NSFW], but there was nothing like that whatsoever. Ribaldry isn't a big part of this book) As I found the beginning of Tawada's Memoirs of a Polar Bear *too* embodied, uncomfortably so, it was surprising to find the opposite here.
I wasn't sure what the reader was supposed to make of the Emissary scheme. I found myself worrying that the children might not be treated well at the other end - but I'm not sure where that came from. Perhaps because the attitudes and services for them seemed so positive in Japan, and it was easy to imagine things being worse elsewhere, because almost anywhere in the real world, they are.
It would be interesting to hear what Japanese readers think of this book, as it is easy to see it as the novel of a writer living abroad. There are passing references to international concerns such as climate change, or pollution leading to spontaneous sex changes in wildlife, and the book presages a shift away from globalisation and towards nationalism (it was first published in 2014). But in terms of Japanese issues, it appears to be referring to those that are well-known internationally, such as Fukushima, the ageing population, young people refusing to carry on traditions, and restrictions on inward immigration - even the early 2010s youth fashion for grey hair - and Yoshiro's descriptions of central Tokyo and come from the memory of a character who has not been there for years.
This is a strange little book, and its light approaches to (or outright elision of) a number of serious issues have put off some readers. However, if you are getting bored with the typical cli-fi and environmental decline dystopias, while remaining interested in the general idea - and you aren't too irritated by illogical worldbuilding - this may be an interesting change.
(Read & reviewed Feb 2019)
A curious blend of dystopia and utopia, extrapolating rather obviously from recent events and trends, set in a contaminated future Japan in which the elderly are super-fit and support everyone, and children plagued by health problems. In its world, most countries are isolationist. For its subject, it has an unusually peaceful and quirky tone and atmosphere, one which may be familiar from light Japanese literary fiction.
Many details of its world-building do not fit together logically, and are far from hard SF - but it makes a refreshing change from the standard projections of future technology and society in scenarios of environmental degeneration, which become hackneyed once you have read enough of them, and which are often American, or American-influenced. I was especially alert to the material and world-building aspects of Tawada's novel because recently, I attempted to plan a story starting in 2095; I had wanted to push past the sometimes lazy received wisdom of the usual American collapsitarian guys, and I ideally wanted to be able to have a logical story behind every object around my characters and everything they knew and thought. Where and when was this made, with materials from where and how did it reach them, or how has it survived? Where did they learn what they know? What influences their words and accents? What communications or media reach them and by what logistical and material means? How would social relations develop with and without various items, taking into account that this is also development from the present, not just a reversion to the past? It was overwhelming to try and work out such stuff along with questioning a lot of material I'd previously read, and I felt a surprising sense of relief at some of the cop-outs involved in Tawada's strangely cosy dystopia, in which it's not terribly clear how the economy works, and in where a Japan that apparently does not import anything from abroad nevertheless has solar powered items (although not in vast numbers), and advanced medical care. There's also what seems to be an entirely new type of trade, in which some countries (including South Africa and India - two of the BRICS group, you may notice) export language, but it's never explained what this entails.
The novel's world attains a combination of technology usages which would be particularly desirable to left-leaning environmentalists, via a sleight of hand combining the isolationist policy and a fantastical shift in public opinion and science in which "Electrical appliances had met with disapproval ever since electric current was discovered to cause nervous disorders, numbness in the extremities, and insomnia — a condition generally known as bzzt-bzzt syndrome." (The author evidently recognises how central public demand is for consumer electricals, and that trying to get rid of them with legislation would be incredibly unpopular.) It would have seemed more plausible if this condition only affected the children, who are all very delicate and afflicted with multiple novel medical problems. Or perhaps it's connected to nuclear radiation, which is hinted as the cause of the major disaster in the recent past. But the revolt against electrical machinery seems to be universal, and as a result, the only household appliances are now solar-powered refrigerators (I wonder if Tawada also loves those moments when every machine in the home is switched off apart from the fridge freezer). Almost everything else - other than high-tech disability aids and the remaining, shambolic, public transport - has seen a return to pre-industrial manual technology such as cloth, wood and horse-drawn carts, and it's very common to employ cleaners. (There are many parallels to the appropriate technology movement of the 1970s, which has been having a small revival in recent years.) Manual labour is highly respected, and people such as academics also take turns doing work like cleaning school toilets. Resources such as paper have to be treated carefully and there is no unnecessary consumerist tat, the product of the old "global rat race in which huge corporations turned underground resources into anything they could sell at inhuman speeds while ruthlessly competing to keep the lowest production costs".
It is not only different forms of work that are equally respected: the society has abolished the "distinction between useful and useless people" and children are discouraged from using expressions that might even tangentially support it, such as "putting people to a lot of trouble". All the children seem to be treasured by society at large, and by the grandparents and great-grandparents who look after them, and unlike in the real world for all but the very rich with complex medical issues and disabilities, they never have to contend with anyone misunderstanding or disbelieving their problems, or with delays or blocks to accessing any treatments available in their country. The children tend to be calm and good-natured, but rather than this being some sort of stereotype of disabled people as patient martyrs, I see this as relating to the huge difference in stress levels I've seen between disabled people who have to manage on UK and US benefits and other insecure resources, versus those who have comfortable private income or come from countries with the best welfare states, such as an old online friend from Norway.
This level of respect and provision on an apparently national scale is a relatively recent phenomenon in recorded human history, but as far as other aspects of the book's society are concerned - the isolationism, the pre-industrial technology and the frugal use of resources - it was no surprise when references to the Edo Period (1603-1868) began to appear more and more frequently. From the first few pages onwards, it had already looked as if the novel was alluding to the Edo, and probably to modern usages of the period, where the Edo is held up as a real-life model of a sustainable society: see for example here, here, here, or here, and more informally in the environmental blogosphere. This page mentions in addition that "Today, the Japanese have an insatiable appetite for all things Edo. This goes deeper than the daily long lines outside the Edo-Tokyo Museum or the very popular historical dramas on TV every Sunday evening." Tawada refers to historically inaccurate usages of the Edo for political ends, when the wise great-grandfather protagonist tries to contradict them: " When Yoshiro submitted an essay entitled “Japan Was Not Isolated” to the newspaper, they refused to publish it. He wrote it to show how strong Japan’s connections to the outside world had been during the Edo period, through the channels of Holland and China, but the newspaper’s official scholar refused to give it his stamp of approval. He decided to hang onto the manuscript until the next time a magazine asked him for a contribution, yet strangely enough, all those requests from magazines dried up completely after that."
The allusions to the Edo may be clear, and the contaminated land and health effects strongly suggest radiation (not to mention the blurb's mention of Fukushima) but exactly how and why things became this way is never really explained, and the government is shadowy and faceless - no one is quite sure where it is based any more, and no politicians are ever named, although there are allusions to capricious changes, and policies restricting freedom of speech on certain topics, or the ability to settle outside your home region. This vagueness often reminded me of another odd and not altogether logical literary dystopia, J by Howard Jacobson. However the repressions and changes rarely seem as frightening as in J. Other than people being anxious not to mention a few topics, chiefly to do with abroad, society remains mysteriously ordered, peaceful and in a way friendly, for a country which has gone through major upheaval and has next to no visible police - there isn't the suspicion that anyone may denounce you, which stalks fully totalitarian dystopias. (The police are privatised and now mostly concern themselves with their brass bands.) Foreign words are strictly to be avoided (though writing should be in Chinese characters), likewise mannerisms (waving is now up and down, like a maneki neko, not side-to-side), and travel abroad is forbidden. However, a mixed-race school teacher, Mr Yonatani, does not appear to face discrimination. "Though his mother was so attached to the name Yonatan that she wanted to keep it as her own, at a time when having non-Japanese relatives was enough to bring you under suspicion, such a foreign-sounding surname was sure to be a strike against her. She did, in fact, often feel she was being watched. She would come home to find signs of a break-in; even when nothing had been taken, the police would come round to investigate."
It's hard to tell what is intentional and what is accidental in the generally cosy and sometimes whimsical style of this book. Sometimes we are told that aspects of Yoshiro's life are unpleasant or sad - and it might sound boring to a reader in their twenties - but his life of enduring good physical healthy, jogging with dogs (rented), trying to get decent fruit from the market, having someone to look after for whom state services provide well, and apparently not having to worry about money sounds pretty pleasant compared with a lot of people's lives now, even if there are a few things he needs to be careful not to say. His great-grandson Mumei has a lot of medical problems, but until late in the book, physical pain and discomfort is only rarely mentioned. Before that they seem like logistical matters, described in such a way that the reader doesn't feel them (nor the physical aspects of helping) - and because most kids have similar problems, and schools always have doctors on hand, he doesn't feel unusual or left out. The way the characters are narrated is strangely unembodied. (After mention of Mumei's digestive problems, I thought another oblique Edo reference might appear - the He-gassen or fart scrolls [N.B. link includes thumbnails of pics which in close up are NSFW], but there was nothing like that whatsoever. Ribaldry isn't a big part of this book) As I found the beginning of Tawada's Memoirs of a Polar Bear *too* embodied, uncomfortably so, it was surprising to find the opposite here.
I wasn't sure what the reader was supposed to make of the Emissary scheme. I found myself worrying that the children might not be treated well at the other end - but I'm not sure where that came from. Perhaps because the attitudes and services for them seemed so positive in Japan, and it was easy to imagine things being worse elsewhere, because almost anywhere in the real world, they are.
It would be interesting to hear what Japanese readers think of this book, as it is easy to see it as the novel of a writer living abroad. There are passing references to international concerns such as climate change, or pollution leading to spontaneous sex changes in wildlife, and the book presages a shift away from globalisation and towards nationalism (it was first published in 2014). But in terms of Japanese issues, it appears to be referring to those that are well-known internationally, such as Fukushima, the ageing population, young people refusing to carry on traditions, and restrictions on inward immigration - even the early 2010s youth fashion for grey hair - and Yoshiro's descriptions of central Tokyo and come from the memory of a character who has not been there for years.
This is a strange little book, and its light approaches to (or outright elision of) a number of serious issues have put off some readers. However, if you are getting bored with the typical cli-fi and environmental decline dystopias, while remaining interested in the general idea - and you aren't too irritated by illogical worldbuilding - this may be an interesting change.
(Read & reviewed Feb 2019)
July 31, 2020
Yoko Tawada’nın ilk okuduğum kitabı; “Bir Kutup Ayısının Anıları” isimli kitabıydı. Bu kitabı da ilk kitabı ile benzer mesajlar içeriyor, ancak bu daha başarılı bulduğum bir çalışma olmuş.
Pandemi günlerinde yaşadıklarımız ile bir anlamda benzeşen noktaları olan bu kitabı, bu günlerde okumak da güzel bir tesadüf oldu.
Önemli mesajlarının yanı sıra, çok da sevimli bir hikaye. Bir solukta okunabilecek bir kitap.
“… Otoriterlik, baba gibi kolay yaralanan, hantal canlıyı korumak için yegane yol gibi görünüyordu…”, Sf; 37.
Pandemi günlerinde yaşadıklarımız ile bir anlamda benzeşen noktaları olan bu kitabı, bu günlerde okumak da güzel bir tesadüf oldu.
Önemli mesajlarının yanı sıra, çok da sevimli bir hikaye. Bir solukta okunabilecek bir kitap.
“… Otoriterlik, baba gibi kolay yaralanan, hantal canlıyı korumak için yegane yol gibi görünüyordu…”, Sf; 37.
July 20, 2018
This story is either a premonition or the bogeyman; you decide.
A month before, someone had put up a poster on the wall outside the elementary school: NO ONE SPEAKS OF THE WEATHER ANYMORE OR REVOLUTION EITHER. In bold fancy lettering, it was a take on the famous quotation, WHILE PEOPLE SPEAK ONLY OF THE WEATHER I SPEAK OF REVOLUTION -- but the very next day someone took it down.
Disturbing, yet engrossing, Tawada has created this post-apocalyptic tale that is so understated, but drowning in pathos. You feel swallowed by it as you read, frozen and helpless as Mumei and Yoshiro's lives play out.
"Grown-ups can live if children die," Mumei replied in a singsong voice, "but if grown-ups die, children can't live." Yoshiro fell silent.
This is more like 3.5 stars, but I'm rounding up for its excellence as a time capsule. It was much different than I expected from reading the blurb, but I enjoyed it more than my imagined storyline. It may be short, but it packs a powerful punch.
Children without parents had long since ceased to be called "orphans"; they were now referred to as doku ritsu jido, "independent children". Because the Chinese character doku looks like a dog separated from the pack who survives by attaching itself to a human being and never leaving its side, Yoshiro had never felt comfortable with the phrase.
A month before, someone had put up a poster on the wall outside the elementary school: NO ONE SPEAKS OF THE WEATHER ANYMORE OR REVOLUTION EITHER. In bold fancy lettering, it was a take on the famous quotation, WHILE PEOPLE SPEAK ONLY OF THE WEATHER I SPEAK OF REVOLUTION -- but the very next day someone took it down.
Disturbing, yet engrossing, Tawada has created this post-apocalyptic tale that is so understated, but drowning in pathos. You feel swallowed by it as you read, frozen and helpless as Mumei and Yoshiro's lives play out.
"Grown-ups can live if children die," Mumei replied in a singsong voice, "but if grown-ups die, children can't live." Yoshiro fell silent.
This is more like 3.5 stars, but I'm rounding up for its excellence as a time capsule. It was much different than I expected from reading the blurb, but I enjoyed it more than my imagined storyline. It may be short, but it packs a powerful punch.
Children without parents had long since ceased to be called "orphans"; they were now referred to as doku ritsu jido, "independent children". Because the Chinese character doku looks like a dog separated from the pack who survives by attaching itself to a human being and never leaving its side, Yoshiro had never felt comfortable with the phrase.
September 28, 2023
No sé qué es esto... pero lo amé.
February 23, 2020
Yüz yaşınızı geçtiniz.
Neler görüp geçirdiğinizi saymaya başlasanız nefesiniz tükenir belki de..
Ama şu an yaşadığınız dönemden daha kötüsü gelmemişti başınıza.
Ülkeniz kabuğuna çekilen bir kaplumbağa gibi şimdi.
Öyle ki kendi topraklarıyla bile bağları zayıflayıp; teker teker kopuyor. Yiyecek şey bulamıyor, dilinizdeki çoğu kelimeyi çekip alıyorlar sizden. Sizden sonra gelen nesiller yorgun doğuyor, kısa yaşıyor.
Sizin lanetiniz ise yaşamak.
Buna yaşamak denirse tabii.
Elinizden ne gelir ki? Bir portakal olsaydı şimdi, ne güzel olurdu sahi..
.
Tokyo’nun Son Çocukları’nı okumaya başladığım gece bir kabus gördüm. Kitaptaki Mumei oluyordum, güçsüzdüm, halim yoktu adım atmaya. Çevrem öyle karanlık öyle çoraktı ki.. Uyanınca kitabı elime alıp bir solukta okudum.
Yine kabuslar göreceğim biliyorum.
Sadece distopik bir evrene götürmüyor Tawada bizi, o evrenin hemen dibimizde olduğunu anlatıyor.
Korktuğumuz her şeye komşuyuz biz.
Karanlığa-açlığa-soğuğa-yalnızlığa ve en çok da ölüme..
Yoko Tawada “bir kutup ayısının anıları”nda da bilinci uyarıyordu ama Tokyo’nun Son Çocukları’nda bilinci yerle bir ediyor. Ahşap bloklar gibi birbiri üzerine devriliyor düşünceler.
Yalnızca Tokyo’daki değil dünya üzerindeki her çocuğu düşünüyorsunuz.
Sizin çocuğunuz, onların çocukları, torunlarınızın çocukları.. Onları görüp göremeyeceğinizi bilemezsiniz ama ya onlar son olursa? İşte bu düşünce sarsıyor insanı.Kısacık bir eserde insanın yakın veya uzak geleceğini sorgulanıyor.
.
Lütfen okuyun.
.
Hüseyin Can Erkin çevirisini okumak ise benim için çok değerli..O ve Ali Volkan Erdemir çevirileri sayesinde Japon edebiyatının renklerine büründüğümü hissediyorum-
.
Nazlım Dumlu çalışması olan kapak tasarımı ise ikiye bölüyor, bir varış ve bir terk edişi..
Neler görüp geçirdiğinizi saymaya başlasanız nefesiniz tükenir belki de..
Ama şu an yaşadığınız dönemden daha kötüsü gelmemişti başınıza.
Ülkeniz kabuğuna çekilen bir kaplumbağa gibi şimdi.
Öyle ki kendi topraklarıyla bile bağları zayıflayıp; teker teker kopuyor. Yiyecek şey bulamıyor, dilinizdeki çoğu kelimeyi çekip alıyorlar sizden. Sizden sonra gelen nesiller yorgun doğuyor, kısa yaşıyor.
Sizin lanetiniz ise yaşamak.
Buna yaşamak denirse tabii.
Elinizden ne gelir ki? Bir portakal olsaydı şimdi, ne güzel olurdu sahi..
.
Tokyo’nun Son Çocukları’nı okumaya başladığım gece bir kabus gördüm. Kitaptaki Mumei oluyordum, güçsüzdüm, halim yoktu adım atmaya. Çevrem öyle karanlık öyle çoraktı ki.. Uyanınca kitabı elime alıp bir solukta okudum.
Yine kabuslar göreceğim biliyorum.
Sadece distopik bir evrene götürmüyor Tawada bizi, o evrenin hemen dibimizde olduğunu anlatıyor.
Korktuğumuz her şeye komşuyuz biz.
Karanlığa-açlığa-soğuğa-yalnızlığa ve en çok da ölüme..
Yoko Tawada “bir kutup ayısının anıları”nda da bilinci uyarıyordu ama Tokyo’nun Son Çocukları’nda bilinci yerle bir ediyor. Ahşap bloklar gibi birbiri üzerine devriliyor düşünceler.
Yalnızca Tokyo’daki değil dünya üzerindeki her çocuğu düşünüyorsunuz.
Sizin çocuğunuz, onların çocukları, torunlarınızın çocukları.. Onları görüp göremeyeceğinizi bilemezsiniz ama ya onlar son olursa? İşte bu düşünce sarsıyor insanı.Kısacık bir eserde insanın yakın veya uzak geleceğini sorgulanıyor.
.
Lütfen okuyun.
.
Hüseyin Can Erkin çevirisini okumak ise benim için çok değerli..O ve Ali Volkan Erdemir çevirileri sayesinde Japon edebiyatının renklerine büründüğümü hissediyorum-
.
Nazlım Dumlu çalışması olan kapak tasarımı ise ikiye bölüyor, bir varış ve bir terk edişi..
February 6, 2021
"Bir Kutup Ayısının Anıları" ndan sonra yazar olumsuz anlamda şaşırttı beni. Belki ilk kitabını okumamış olsam beğenebilirdim ama öyle bir kitabı yazmış birinden böyle bir şey okumak benim için üzücü oldu.
Diğeri ne kadar derli toplu ise bu kitabı o kadar dağınıktı. Kısacık bir kitaba çok çok fazla şey sığdırmaya çalışmış. Nitelik ve nicelik uyuşmamış bu da aksaklık yaratmış; iyi dikilmemiş bir kıyafet gibi kötü durmuş.
Bu zamanlarda böyle bir distopya okumak zamanlama açısından uygun düşse de ve özellikle dil üzerine yazdıkları düşüncede açılımı sağlasa da belki ilk kitabının hoş sedasını unutmamış olduğumdan beni çok tatmin etmedi.
Diğeri ne kadar derli toplu ise bu kitabı o kadar dağınıktı. Kısacık bir kitaba çok çok fazla şey sığdırmaya çalışmış. Nitelik ve nicelik uyuşmamış bu da aksaklık yaratmış; iyi dikilmemiş bir kıyafet gibi kötü durmuş.
Bu zamanlarda böyle bir distopya okumak zamanlama açısından uygun düşse de ve özellikle dil üzerine yazdıkları düşüncede açılımı sağlasa da belki ilk kitabının hoş sedasını unutmamış olduğumdan beni çok tatmin etmedi.
July 18, 2018
Slow moving, delicate, and sort of quietly devastating. It took me many more days to read than I thought as my attention drifted in and out - but I think some books just need to drip into you like that.
January 29, 2024
آخرین فرزندان توکیو
ترجمه سونیا سینگ
انتشارات مجید
من تعریف این کتاب را از چند نفر شنیده بودم ولی به نظرم معمولی آمد
ترجمه سونیا سینگ
انتشارات مجید
من تعریف این کتاب را از چند نفر شنیده بودم ولی به نظرم معمولی آمد
May 5, 2019
I can never resist a short dystopian fable and devour them like snacks, all in one go. This quite possibly results in my deriving less meaning from them than I could. In this case, I felt myself lacking the linguistic and cultural reference points to appreciate it properly. I quite often find this with Russian literature and sometimes other fiction in translation. There are probably references to the Fukushima disaster in ‘The Last Children of Tokyo’, for instance, although I couldn’t pin them down. The narrative centres on a hale and hearty centenarian great-grandfather and his delicate and sickly great-grandson. As a consequence of major environmental disaster, future Japan has retreated from the rest the world in an echo of the Edo period. Cutting the country off completely has not addressed the environmental crisis or falling population, so shadowy authorities are considering sending youthful ambassadors overseas. There are many intriguing world-building details, such as privatisation of the government, pervasive gender fluidity, and dismantling of the electric grid. The plot is minimal, however. The reader observes the elderly and energetic Yoshiro painstakingly care of young Mumei, whose delicate body seems unlikely to reach adulthood. Yoshiro also observes that soon it will be unsafe to go outside at all, as well as frequently commenting on food contamination, because the environment continues to deteriorate.
Quite a lot of the book’s short length consists of flashbacks centring on the rest of Yoshiro’s family. These are slightly frustrating, as they lack sufficient context to provide any explanation of how the environment, economy, and society collapsed to such an extent. Mumei’s grandparents and parents are depicted as somewhat flighty individuals, while he himself is a calm person apparently unconcerned by mortality. Yoshiro is likewise a peaceable and reliable fellow, albeit afraid for Mumei who can barely survive a short walk. I found the reflections on generation gaps striking:
Such minor details are the only signs of anger, fear, and dread in the face of civilisation’s apparent collapse. If children cannot survive, there is no prospect of a future for Japan, yet this remains subtext hidden behind daily routines. I did like the way that the narrative conveys significant changes in society via material details, often of food. By contrast, the relationships between characters are quite ephemeral, except the touching bond between Yoshiro and Mumei. The unsettling generational differences are perhaps the most memorable parts of the book:
‘The Last Children of Tokyo’ is mysterious, atmospheric, and guarded, although that could in part be due to my lack of familiarity with Japan. While technically apocalyptic in content, it is at heart a quiet tale of an old man and a young child that comes to no firm conclusions about how the generation gap can be bridged.
Quite a lot of the book’s short length consists of flashbacks centring on the rest of Yoshiro’s family. These are slightly frustrating, as they lack sufficient context to provide any explanation of how the environment, economy, and society collapsed to such an extent. Mumei’s grandparents and parents are depicted as somewhat flighty individuals, while he himself is a calm person apparently unconcerned by mortality. Yoshiro is likewise a peaceable and reliable fellow, albeit afraid for Mumei who can barely survive a short walk. I found the reflections on generation gaps striking:
Assuming he had knowledge and wealth to leave to his descendants was mere arrogance, Yoshiro now realised. This life with his great-grandson was about all he could manage. And for that he needed to be flexible, in mind and body, with the courage to doubt what he had believed for over a century. Sloughing off his pride like an old jacket, he’d have to go around in his shirtsleeves. If he was cold, rather than buying a new jacket it would be better to think of ways to grow a coat of fur like a bear’s. He was not really an ‘old man’, but a man who, after living for a century, had become a new species of human being, he thought, clenching his fists again and again.
Such minor details are the only signs of anger, fear, and dread in the face of civilisation’s apparent collapse. If children cannot survive, there is no prospect of a future for Japan, yet this remains subtext hidden behind daily routines. I did like the way that the narrative conveys significant changes in society via material details, often of food. By contrast, the relationships between characters are quite ephemeral, except the touching bond between Yoshiro and Mumei. The unsettling generational differences are perhaps the most memorable parts of the book:
You could tell the younger relations by their rounded backs, thinning hair, pale faces, and by how slowly their chopsticks moved. Realising their descendants were in such a state because they’d been so feckless made the elderly feel guilty, dampening the festivities.
While it wasn’t clear whether or not Yoshiro’s generation would really have to live forever, for the time being they had definitely been robbed of death. Perhaps when their bodies had reached the end, even their fingers and toes worn down to nothing, their minds would hang on, refusing to shut down, writhing still against immobile flesh.
‘The Last Children of Tokyo’ is mysterious, atmospheric, and guarded, although that could in part be due to my lack of familiarity with Japan. While technically apocalyptic in content, it is at heart a quiet tale of an old man and a young child that comes to no firm conclusions about how the generation gap can be bridged.
October 8, 2018
An absolutely marvellous and mysterious book by the author of Memoirs of a Polar Bear. I have loved Japanese writer’s Yoko Tawada’s previous writings, but this one knocks it out of the park with its sheer sublime investigation of caring and time and what it means to be present in the world. The book takes place in a dystopic Japan that is cordoned off from the rest of the world. The elderly have been bestowed with a strange gift of immortality and grow feisty and more active the older they become. Whereas the new generation of children are weak, feeble and confined to wheelchairs, teetering on the brink of mortality their whole lives. By swapping the roles of the old and the young, Tawada explores what it means to have a knowledge of one’s finite passage in the world. And the children have such profound sense of wisdom, and what is important and what is not worth holding onto. It is sweet and funny and poignant on so many levels.
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July 24, 2018
Tawada manages to construct such a truly innovative dystopian future for Japan in such a short space of time. Characters are introduced at natural points in the narrative and the many facets of Tokyo’s new society are revealed to the reader steadily throughout. You never feel like there is a push to relay information even though this world building has to be achieved in just over 100 pages. She makes the unrealistic easily believable with beautiful, gentle prose that sometimes still manages to cut like a knife. Masterfully crafted and such a creative, unique vision.
I purchased the beautiful paperback for myself, but was also sent an ebook from Portobello through Netgalley in exchange for an honest opinion
I purchased the beautiful paperback for myself, but was also sent an ebook from Portobello through Netgalley in exchange for an honest opinion
August 29, 2018
2.5 stars - I didn't get it. Plenty of ideas were interesting, but it was all ideas strung together and just when a plot might have got going...it stopped. I think the problem is that I approach this from an SFF point of view, rather than literary fiction. I expect the wrong thing from the story and I get invested in the wrong bits. Oh well!
November 9, 2018
A gentle dystopian novel, where a great grandfather lovingly and joyfully raises his feeble but playful, and near beatific great-grandson. Which makes it sound like a tear-jerker, but it's not. There's whimsy, humor and a quiet hopefulness in their world, thanks to the children. Among the charms: old Japanese holidays are reinvented – Children’s Day becomes “Apologize to Children Day”, Labor Day becomes “Being Alive is Enough Day” - and new holidays are democratically voted on, like “Off-line Day” to commemorate the day the Internet died. The police force is privatized and their activities center on their brass band, which children love, and shops have become little stalls where people sell anything they want.
And the cover is a perfect!
And the cover is a perfect!
February 22, 2020
Doğanın kaynaklarının büyük bir kısmının kirlendiği, bütün dengenin alt üst olduğu dünyada; yaşlılar ölemiyor, çocuklarsa büyüyemiyor. Bütün roller değişmiş, yaşlılar çocuklara bakıyor, onlar için çalışıyor. Bir nevi geriye dönük bir evrim yaşanıyor. Özetle, doğanın biz insanlıktan intikamını nasıl alacağına dair, ekolojik bir bilim kurgu, distopya kitabı. Ancak bilim kurgu sevmeyen insanların dahi okumasını tavsiye ederim. Zira her ne kadar bilim kurgu olsa da, köklerini günümüz alışkanlıklarından alıyor ve geleceğe dair bir “neden olmasın” sorgusuna sebep oluyor.
March 17, 2022
"Henüz uygulanmamış yasalar kadar korkutucu bir şey olamazdı. Birilerini hapse atmak istediklerinde kimsenin umursamadığı bir yasayı durup dururken uygulamaları yeterliydi."
Daha önce yazarın Bir Kutup Ayısının Anıları isimli kitabını beğenmeyip yarım bırakmıştım. Bir distopya örneği olan bu eseri ise bitirebildim ama duygularım karışık.
Bir yanda Japon yazarlara özgü dehşeti, yıkımı, umutsuzluğu abartmadan ince dokunuşlarla masal anlatır gibi aktarma yeteneği göze çarpıyor metinde, fakat bir yandan da eksik bir şeyler var bu kitapta düşüncesi peşimi bırakmıyor. Kötü yazılmış bir eser değil ama çok boşluk var. Çeviri, Hüseyin Can Erkin hocamızın her çalışmasında olduğu gibi gayet başarılı.
Ele aldığı konu açısından okunası olmakla beraber beklentileri yüksek tutmamak lazım. Özellikle distopya meraklılarına önereceğim bir kitap olacak, diyerek yorumumu sonlandırıyorum.
Daha önce yazarın Bir Kutup Ayısının Anıları isimli kitabını beğenmeyip yarım bırakmıştım. Bir distopya örneği olan bu eseri ise bitirebildim ama duygularım karışık.
Bir yanda Japon yazarlara özgü dehşeti, yıkımı, umutsuzluğu abartmadan ince dokunuşlarla masal anlatır gibi aktarma yeteneği göze çarpıyor metinde, fakat bir yandan da eksik bir şeyler var bu kitapta düşüncesi peşimi bırakmıyor. Kötü yazılmış bir eser değil ama çok boşluk var. Çeviri, Hüseyin Can Erkin hocamızın her çalışmasında olduğu gibi gayet başarılı.
Ele aldığı konu açısından okunası olmakla beraber beklentileri yüksek tutmamak lazım. Özellikle distopya meraklılarına önereceğim bir kitap olacak, diyerek yorumumu sonlandırıyorum.
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