The Emissary by Yoko Tawada

 

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

I’m not even sure what to say about this book. It has its moments. The premise is quite interesting and relevant, and the characters good. But it lacks an actual plot. Very little happens, and when it seems like a promising bit of action or direction is about to take place, the narrative switches to something different. 

 

The end of the book finally seems like it will go somewhere, and then it…just ends. I felt like this book could have been something, could have found a direction, but it never did. The author seemed content to create a world, then tell the back story, but never really found a story she wanted to tell that would have been about something. Because of this, the book feels static, like one is looking at a picture, not seeing a movie, if that makes sense. 

 

The premise of the book is that Japan has undergone some unnamed environmental catastrophe. Since the book was published in 2014, it is natural to assume that the Fukushima nuclear disaster was in the author’s mind. Whatever has happened, both the ocean and the land has been contaminated, and food can only be grown or harvested at the extremes - Okinawa and Hokkaido. 

 

As the result of this disaster, Japan has isolated itself completely from the outside world, going so far as to purge all things foreign, even language itself. This is ostensibly to prevent contamination from spreading, but it also seems to be about shame and xenophobia. 

 

The other result of the disaster is a strange reversal in humankind. The old now live incredibly long and vigorous lives - and it is implied that they may now live forever - while the young are born nearly helpless and die in childhood. Not only that, humans reverse their sex at least once a lifetime, and sometimes more. 

 

Because most of the population has died, cities are empty, and technology is no longer in use. Most animals are extinct, and the children have never seen them. Since the soil is toxic, people are separated from the ground itself and walk on glass plates. And also dandelions are gigantic and the fish have star markings. 

 

Into this weird dystopia (although it is more sad than threatening) are placed Yoshiro, a 107 year old man, and his great-grandson Mumei, who is becoming increasingly frail. Yoshiro devotes his life to caring for Mumei, particularly since he can no longer effectively write novels like he used to, because he knows too many foreign words, and there is nobody to buy his books anyway. 

 

In that paragraph, you pretty much have the plot. Sure, we go back in time and learn about Yoshiro’s marriage, a bit about his estranged wife, some family history. But this is clearly backstory in flashbacks, not really a narrative arc. 

 

The title refers to what could have grown into a plot: a secretive group has decided to send some children outside of the country as “Emissaries” to the outside world, both to break the isolation and, perhaps, so the outside world can assist in a cure for the children. 

 

This was a promising idea, but nothing ever comes of it. Mumei is selected to be an emissary, but we merely hear that he has a memory gap during which time he believes he served in that role. But we learn nothing further. 

 

Whatever the deficiencies in plot, the book does a good job of creating a believable world. And also in metaphorically addressing some issues affecting our world at large and some more specific to Japan. 

 

Most obvious is the environmental destruction and its effect on the future of our species. Yoshiro suffers from a lot of guilt that his generation essentially destroyed the future for his descendants. I have noted before that Japan has a fraught relationship with atomic energy. The Bomb is never far below the surface. Since Japan is the only country who has been nuked, this makes sense. I would compare the fact that Japan continues to process this to the way that the United States has never finished the Civil War. There can be no resolution without a fundamental change to the core issues. 

 

Likewise, Japan has been both a leader in nuclear energy and has had the second worst nuclear disaster in history. This environmental conundrum and the coverup that followed the disaster are definitely found in this book. One could extrapolate to climate change as well - this has changed patterns of food production and left alternate cycles of flood and drought in the book. 

 

A more Japan-specific issue is that of the old and young. It is no secret that Japan’s population is one of the oldest in the world. The elderly continue to live longer lives (which is good) but fewer and fewer children are born, creating a cycle in which people of childbearing and working age bear greater and greater burdens, making children a luxury. 

 

Tawada takes this to an extreme, where it almost seems the elderly have become immortal, while children are unable to survive. This cycle of the old preying on the young seems to be spreading to much of the rest of the developed world. In the one sense, children no longer are economic assets as they were in agrarian societies - instead, they are like pets - they cost money. 

 

But in another sense, the older generations have, through their political choices over the last 45 or 50 years, created the policies that exacerbate this problem. Younger people are saddled with crushing student debt, unaffordable housing, lower wages with fewer benefits, and as a result, have far less wealth than their ancestors did by their age. (Remember, Millennials are in their 30s and 40s now.) 

 

Yoshiro’s guilt isn’t misplaced, although it is a generational guilt, not a personal one. He himself intended no harm, but the systems his generation put in place have failed their descendants catastrophically. 

 

A final theme is that of turning inward. Japan has isolated itself, in supposed imitation of Edo Period, a previous time of isolation from the outside world. (Although, as a character points out, it wasn’t as isolated as popularly believed.) Like the country, the characters have largely isolated themselves. Yoshiro’s family is all spread out, with none of them communicating much at all. What communication takes place (through letters) contains less and less actual content, becoming a ritual without meaning or connection. 

 

I found this fascinating and true. Whatever causes us to turn inward, to isolate, to restrict ourselves only to people like us - whether this is in the form of xenophobia, or in the way closed groups tend toward extremism - ends up leading to death and disability. For Japan in this book, its society is dying, and part of that is the lack of connection to the outside. Language is shrinking. There are no new ideas or solutions or hope. 

 

For xenophobes in our own country, they have devolved into increasing paranoia, choking on their own hate, afraid of ideas and people different from them, and increasingly isolated from their own children and grandchildren. 

 

So, there are things I liked about the book. I just wish it had taken the ideas and gone somewhere with them, rather than mostly creating a large, sprawling, and directionless picture.