First published in Japanese in 1994, this is by Yoko Ogawa (author of more than 40 books and the winner of "every major Japanese literary award available").

Stephen Snyder's English translation came out in 2019, and the book was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize the following year.

It hit my radar with Henry Eliot's list of island books (which came out even before I'd decided that islands should become one of my reading themes, for reasons that should by now be apparent).

But the timing was perhaps not impeccable. Not long after reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and pretty much coterminous with reading Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, here I was slap bang in the middle of another dystopian novel...



The fundamental scenario in The Memory Police is that things are going missing... The first sentence goes like this: "I sometimes wonder what was disappeared first -- among all the things that have vanished from the island." It's a good introduction. Things don't disappear of their own accord. Rather, they "are" disappeared. Lots of things have gone, and the origins of the mass disappearance are already a bit murky.

Our narrator, never named, is a young woman. Her parents are dead; she lives on her own; she's a novelist. She remembers her mother (someone who remembered things even after they'd been disappeared) describing the loss process: "It doesn't hurt, and you won't even be particularly sad. One morning you'll simply wake up and it will be over, before you've even realized... You'll feel that something has changed from the night before, and you'll know that you've lost something, that something has disappeared from the island." When it is decreed that something should go, people pour it away, throw it away, burn it... Any who are too slow to conform are coerced by the Memory Police. Soon the very idea of that thing has vanished from people's heads.

Exceptions, like the narrator's mother (who has secretly squirrelled away examples of things that no longer exist, and clearly remembers all about them), are taken away. They don't come back. Not alive, anyway.

Off-island passenger traffic has been disrupted: "The ferry has been tied to the dock for a very long time and is now completely covered with rust. No passengers board it and it can no longer take them anywhere. It, too, is among the things that have been disappeared from the island."

Later we hear of people who try to escape by sea, smuggling themselves off the island with the help of another of these rare aberrations -- this time someone who still remembered how boats work...

Of course, as an islander, I immediately wondered: Has ALL maritime traffic stopped? How does the island revictual itself? Is it totally self-reliant? But Ogawa is not really interested in such mechanics. Nor does she see any need to fill in the details of how this unnamed island came to be under the thumb of these memory-destroyers, and exactly what they stand for. The people who are experiencing this probably don't know either -- or have forgotten. She's not even that interested in the nitty-gritty of disappearance, which frustrates some commentators who identify a lack of logic in the whole scenario. You shouldn't let yourself worry about that. Just take "disappearance" at face value, as Ogawa describes it...

Anyway, the narrator knows someone who used to work as a mechanic on the ferry. His wife, now dead, used to be her nurse. Now he lives on the abandoned vessel, and helps out with odd jobs. It's a nice cross-generational friendship. Neither of them can remember much: "Our memories were diminishing day by day, for when something disappeared from the island, all memory of it vanished, too."


These pictures were taken in 2015, on the island of Itsukushima (Miyajima). But Ogawa's book is culturally non-committal. There's little to mark the setting as specifically Japanese

***

The force called the Memory Police first appeared about 15 years before the start of the narrative. It had started to become apparent that not everyone forgot in the way that was required, and this needed to be dealt with. They're a scary force. We hear about their "forceful, rhythmic boots", the "badges glinting from their collars", their "terrible efficiency". They're the kind of body we're familiar with from novels like 1984.

R is the narrator's editor. He tells her about safe houses, where people who can still remember take refuge. There's a rumour that gene analysis is under way, so that the Memory Police can determine more accurately who can remember, and who can't. This is driving more fear.

Two events underline the gravity of the situation. Professor Inui, a friend of her late parents, together with his wife and children, turn up at the narrator's house to say goodbye, and to entrust to her some items her mother had passed on to them. They too are going into hiding, the professor having been summoned to report to the genetic analysis centre.

The day after, roses disappear. Everyone duly throws the existing roses into the river, where they drift out to sea in a massive crimson tide. Such a pointless thing to get rid of...

Inserted into the narration from time to time are excerpts from the novel the narrator is writing. It's about a typist who loses her voice, and communicates with her lover (and typing teacher) by means of the typewriter: "I myself wasn’t sure what would happen next," says the narrator. "The story seemed simple and pleasant enough, but I had a feeling it might take a frightening turn."

This inset story, of loss and imprisonment and distorted relationships, becomes a puzzling commentary on the main thread of the narrative.


The narrator's father had been an ornithologist. Luckily for him, birds didn't disappear until after he had died...

The narrator confides to the old man: "I don’t know what will happen to the island if things continue to disappear... Things are disappearing more quickly than they are being created, right... What can the people on this island create? ... A few kinds of vegetables, cars that constantly break down, heavy, bulky stoves, some half-starved stock animals, oily cosmetics, babies, the occasional simple play, books no one reads... Poor, unreliable things that will never make up for those that are disappearing -- and the energy that goes along with them. It’s subtle but it seems to be speeding up, and we have to watch out. If it goes on like this and we can’t compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it's completely hollowed out, we'll all disappear without a trace."

He reassures her. He copes, he says. He even got over the loss of the ferry. His attitude exemplifies the curiously passive fatalism that we will keep encountering among the citizenry. But the old man does acknowledge: "There are more gaps in the island than there used to be. When I was a child, the whole place seemed... how can I put this? ... a lot fuller, a lot more real. But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains. Which is why you shouldn’t worry."

When the narrator realizes that R, her editor, can remember everything, just like her mother, she realizes the danger he is in, and decides to prepare a hide-out for him. There's a strange little room between the floors of her slightly quirky house, which can be accessed only via a trapdoor. That's where she wants him to conceal himself.

It's all a little odd, this. She doesn't really CONSULT him. She just announces her decision: "Please come with me... Please get ready as soon as you can." He demurs. What about his wife, who's expecting a baby? The narrator promises to look after her: "Your job is to survive, so that one day you’ll be reunited with her and your baby."

Fair enough, but she adds: "And besides, if you’re arrested, what will become of the novel I’m writing?" Maybe this is a jocular comment. Or maybe this is an essentially exploitative relationship, like the one depicted in the inset story.

However that may be, R settles himself in. The narrator and the old man are his support team.



The world outside is deteriorating. Winter sets in. Photographs disappear (R begs her not to destroy hers, but "already she has lost her sense of what a photograph is"). Fruit disappears. The Memory Police are more active than ever.

One day the old man is taken in, and she goes to the headquarters of the Memory Police to make enquiries. It's a somewhat surreal scenario: "My voice trailed off, echoing from the ceiling before being lost in the vastness of the hall." This sounds Kafkaesque, and the whole encounter is like that: "As I looked about me, I was puzzled by the unexpected luxury of the furnishings: elegant leather couches, Gobelins tapestries on the walls, a crystal chandelier, and heavy curtains on the windows. There was even a maid who brought in tea. I wondered what they had in store for me."

The old man is released. His arrest has nothing to do with R. He was being asked about a "smuggling" incident.

The extracts from the narrator's novel become ever more disturbing. The teacher/lover is profoundly controlling, and eventually locks the young woman up in an isolated room at the top of a tower. You can't help but compare this imprisonment with the situation of R...

***

Our three characters celebrate the old man's birthday in the secret room. R gives him a musical box, explaining that when he realized the disappearances weren't affecting him as they were others, he decided to keep quiet, while hiding as many of the disappeared objects as he could: "It was impossible for me to simply discard them the way everyone else did. Touching them became a way of confirming that I was still whole."

The musical box was the first thing he ever hid: "I'll be happy if I can help delay or stop this decay in your hearts even in some small way. I’m not sure how to do that, but I think there might be some benefit from holding these forgotten objects in your hands, feeling their weight, smelling them, listening to them." He's not sure "decay" is the right word. "But I do know that you’re changing, and not in a way that can be easily reversed or undone. It seems to be leading to an end that frightens me a great deal."

He might well worry. Objects clearly affect reality, so that the disappearance of calendars corresponds with terribly cold weather. People fear that without calendars, there will be no spring.

Numerous dramatic events stand out against the humdrum everyday backdrop. The Memory Police arrive, but they don't locate the trapdoor. A woman who asks for the narrator's help (she refuses) disappears the following week.



And novels disappear. It had to happen... R urges the narrator to go on writing. But she feels that will be impossible: "The word 'novel' itself is getting harder to pronounce. That’s how you know the disappearance is taking hold. It won’t be long now until I’ll have forgotten everything. Remembering is impossible."

The old man helps her to burn her books: "As each volume left my hand, I felt a slight twinge, as though the hollow place in my memory were being enlarged book by book." When one book leaves her hand, though, she realizes she is reminded of a bird. But birds have disappeared... She's not supposed to remember them... It felt "as though a spark had found its way into the bottomless swamp of my heart".

By now, a romantic relationship has developed between R and the narrator, and you wonder more than ever about her motivation. She says to the old man: "Do you think he’ll ever be able to come out of hiding? Do you think he’ll be able to see his wife and child again? I doubt it. I think he’ll be able to live only in the hidden room. His soul is too dense. If he comes out, he’ll dissolve into pieces, like a deep-sea fish pulled to the surface too quickly. I suppose my job is to go on holding him here at the bottom of the sea." Hmmm... That does sound very dodgy...

An earthquake plays its part in burying memories, and indirectly kills the old man, but not before he and the narrator have discovered some more items secreted by her mother. R is thrilled to reconnect with these objects, which he is sure will help the others remember. They're not convinced.

But R continues to encourage the narrator. To write. To remember...

Then body parts start disappearing... Her left leg... Everyone's left leg... There's always someone offering specious reassurance, in a way that makes the Japanese sound awfully British:

"'You’ll get used to it. It may be a bit tricky at first, but that’s been true for other disappearances as well. It takes time to get accustomed, but there’s nothing to be afraid of.'
"'I guess I’m actually lucky,' laughed the old woman who lived two houses down the street. 'Half the arthritis in my knees is gone!'"

It's hard to move as though you don't remember having a left leg when you do, so the Memory Police are having a field-day catching out people with memories.



The final section is a slow floating away:

"By the time their right arms disappeared, people were less troubled than they had been with the disappearance of their left legs..." The narrator does fear, though, that "every last bit of me will disappear". R promises he will keep her safe, "here in my secret room". This sounds like another riff on the insert story, where the hapless young woman passes up a chance to escape, and is abandoned totally. (It's a strange business, this story within the story, with its focus on domination and submission...)

"A deep stillness was rapidly spreading over the island. The gap grew ever larger between the rates at which old things decayed and disappeared and new ones were created... The citizens of the island had lost everything that had a form, and our voices alone drifted aimlessly."

The Memory Police have had to give up their hunt. How can they hunt people who are no more than voices? R will be able to leave the room, she says: "The outside world is in ruins, crushed under the weight of the snow, but you’ll manage. I know you’ll be able to melt the frozen world bit by bit, and I’m sure others who have been in hiding will come out to join you."

When he is convinced there is really nothing left of her, he climbs the ladder, opens the trapdoor, and leaves. "Closed in the hidden room, I continued to disappear."


Yoko Ogawa

***

I enjoyed the book. I liked the haunting, elegiac quality of the prose, its chilliness, its calm, eerie atmosphere. Jia Tolentino expresses this well: "As the novel progresses, you feel as if a white fog is slowly thickening."

But I found it puzzling. There seemed to be something disjointed about it -- something that didn't quite cohere thematically.

And the insert story, with its parallel tale of loss and confinement and exploitation, cast onto the main narration a curious shadow that I didn't totally understand -- but then perhaps the narrator didn't either...

A couple of interesting articles shed a little light on some of my questions:

1.

As a teenager, Ogawa was very moved by the story of Anne Frank (who also came up in connection with Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep).

The Diary of a Young Girl, Ogawa tells Itakura Kimie, was the reason she became an author. She relates the story specifically to The Memory Police: "On the day the editor moves to the secret room, it’s raining heavily. This was the same for Anne Frank and her family. As everyone lowered their heads and hurried through the downpour, nobody challenged their rapid pace toward the hiding place. My scene was meant to pay homage to Anne."

Julia Shiota notes that Ogawa wrote two books about Anne Frank (a collection of essays, and a book for young readers): "Ogawa visited the hidden annex in Amsterdam as part of her research, touching the things that once belonged to Frank herself, getting a sense of how bodies fit within such tight quarters."

Ogawa's goal in The Memory Police, says Kimie, was to put Frank’s experience into her own story: "By writing about someone who had so many things taken from her for no good reason, she thought the oppressive nature of the society would naturally reveal itself. At the same time, she wanted to write about vanished memories. Initially these were separate ideas, but at some point they became connected, and she decided to create a story with an island setting."

That, I think, is the disjuncture I'd worried about: The combination of the scarily coercive backdrop with the much broader, altogether soulful, meditation on memory and loss.



2.

A quarter of a century separated the publication of the original from that of its English translation. A different world, creating a different set of reactions... Kimie comments: "Recounting her experience in American media interviews, Ogawa says that while she felt the essence of the work had been thoroughly conveyed through the translation, she was surprised at the links reporters made to the current US political situation. 'They were asking me political questions that nobody did 25 years ago. I had no intention of depicting a near-future setting as a political statement -- it was meant to be more like the past, before I was born. But when I reread the book for the first time in ages, I was shocked that I’d included a tsunami, and it’s frightening to think that rather than getting further away from the world I created in the book, contemporary readers are connecting it with the near future...'"

Ah, interesting... Today, we're seeing this scary stuff gathering pace around us in real time. Already, we're being asked to forget facts and realities; to adjust ourselves to ever more outlandish pronouncements from on high; to entrust our cultural and/or personal bedrock to the ephemeral world of the internet; and to deal with the strictures of cancel culture. The Memory Police seem at the door...

But that wasn't Ogawa's original intention: "It was meant to be more like the past, before I was born..." (Which was 1962.)



Julia Shiota's brilliantly perceptive article picks up on this point, and on the disjuncture I mentioned, in a way that makes you see the whole book in a different light. Extensive quotes follow...

"One of the most striking images of the novel is the titular Memory Police. Most reviews of Ogawa’s novel focus on the fascistic function of the organization, remarking on the timeliness of the novel’s translation given the increase in global fascism over the last several years...

"But the heavy emphasis on the Memory Police themselves obscures the larger argument that Ogawa makes about the nature of storytelling and, in particular, about historical revisionism. Rather than situating the Memory Police as the true antagonists in the story, the novel instead points to the power of invisible historical processes and how human beings participate in these processes. The Japanese title of the novel... roughly translates to secret or quiet crystallization. Unlike the English title, the original Japanese title does not focus on a specific group of bad actors but on a surreptitious, societal process underpinning the entire novel."

Focusing on the Memory Police themselves gives us someone to blame. But they don't seem to be in control of events: "As the novel progresses, it seems they simply flow with the disappearances, using the situation to their political advantage. They reinforce the disappearances, ransacking houses and taking people away if they show signs of memory, but they are not an all-powerful entity. They are a striking red herring that catches our eye as the underlying process of crystallization continues unabated."

As Ogawa was writing, the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II was approaching. Questions were again being asked about Japan's role in the conflict, and the way it is remembered.



Shiota again: "Japan has long struggled with acknowledging historical atrocities and its colonization of the Asian mainland and other countries in the Pacific. One of the most common refrains Japan has used as a nation to sidestep responsibility is to blame all wartime acts on the government and the military at the time. The general populace is thus painted as unwilling participants or as individuals duped into the wartime project. It is easy to brush off responsibility when it was those people back then who were 'the problem.'

"For decades after the war, there was outright denial from many quarters that certain historical events even occurred... There are so many intentional gaps in Japanese history regarding WWII that many Japanese citizens aren’t even aware of these events. Or these historical facts are painted as propaganda pushed by enemies of the Japanese state and shouldn’t be believed.

"It’s within this historical milieu that Ogawa’s novel takes on its most piercing critique. How is it possible to forget so much so quickly, and how does the loss of memory impact the way we act in the present?... With the smaller disappearances come increasingly troubling ones, objects that are a little more complex and abstract: photographs, maps, and books. Eventually, body parts begin to disappear. It becomes evident that these disappearances, while inconsequential when we consider them on a case-by-case basis, add up to devastating results. Once we learn how to forget, even the most seemingly unimportant things, the very act of forgetting becomes easier...

"In the stories the narrator recounts from her mother or the accounts given by elders on the island, the disappearances have happened for some time, giving the islanders plenty of time to acclimate to them and naturalize the process... Perhaps at some point, the very concept of resistance vanished from memory. With no other recourse, most islanders simply continue to accept each disappearance -- even as they increase in number and significance.

"To forget is to be disconnected from the past, to make it easier to miss the connections that link events or people together in the present. The complete loss of an object, like a map, goes beyond the loss of the map as a physical thing. What disappears with it is the knowledge of where you are in relation to others on the island, the ability to travel, the understanding that other islands exist beyond the narrator’s limited purview. Once a critical mass of information is lost, the linkages between them disappear, making it easier to believe that the world we live in now is how things have always been and that there is no need -- and no possible way -- to chart another path.

"The novel provides some hope that the disappearances are not permanent and that the decaying of hearts can eventually stop...

"There are also some glimmers of hope for those who do forget. The narrator falls victim to the disappearances but tries to resist, mostly for the sake of R. For the most part, she finds it difficult to mentally grasp on to objects that have disappeared. But there are moments where hints of memory break through to her consciousness...

"Once things are forgotten, it is difficult to get them back. Things ossify, crystallize [remember the Japanese title?] until the world becomes something naturalized and accepted -- things have always been this way. Then the cycle of forgetting begins to perpetuate itself...

"The disappearances on Ogawa’s fictional island may have started as a natural phenomenon, but at some point, it seems that the crystallization joined with human acceptance, gaining momentum as more and more people came to accept it. Ogawa pulls no punches with how the novel pans out; while there is some hope, the consequences of generations of forgetting are entirely, painfully realized. Even characters, like the narrator, who try their best to push back against the forgetting, fall prey. The warning of The Memory Police is thus not to beware of fascistic organizations that try to control the populace, but instead to beware of the invisible processes that are constantly occurring that allow such organizations to appear. By the time these entities appear, it is too late."

Such a good article... Read it all...

It's another reminder that we always need to note the date of publication -- and that titles are really difficult to translate... In this case, the English title seems not only to fail to embody the essence of the book, but also to have served it quite badly, often leading expectations in a direction that ends in disappointment.



3.

Madeleine Thien (author of the impressive Do Not Say We Have Nothing), expresses very beautifully an idea that also occurred to me as I read:

"While a reader may feel the need to interpret it solely as a political novel, the book also reads, accurately and passionately, as a profound meditation on dying. In its losses, we see the aching removal of a person from their world. In the twilight of life, memories weaken, friends disappear, objects are lost. The things that once brought pleasure no longer move us. Parts of our bodies succumb, by stroke or paralysis; we can no longer feel our left leg, our right hand. We slip away. What to do, how to refuse, how to mourn? Ogawa’s novel insists that we retain small illuminations; we are the key of a typewriter striking a note, leaving a trace -- an R, say -- before falling back into silence. The Police themselves, emotionless and orderly, may be no more and no less than the loss that eventually consumes each and every living thing..."

Ah yes... That drip-by-drip erosion that we all fear so much is so beautifully rendered here.

***

It's always a tribute to a book when I spend a lot of time thinking about it after the last page is turned -- even when I don't succeed in tying up all the loose ends.

On that basis, The Memory Police has done a good job. And I would certainly return to Ogawa's work.