The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
“And no matter how wonderful the memory, it vanishes if you leave it alone, if no one pays attention to it. They leave no trace, no evidence that they ever existed.”
Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police covers a broad spectrum from totalitarian regime, cultural and individual memories, notion of cognition to the themes such as familial loss, identity and power shifts. Originally published in Japanese in 1994 and translated into English in the year 2019 the book was named a finalist for the 2020 International Booker Prize. The book narrates the dystopian fable of an unnamed island where objects and the its memory thereof disappear.
The book opens with the protagonist who is a novelist by profession trying to recollect what disappeared first “-among all things that has vanished from the island.” The small remote island were the story is set is controlled by the titular Memory Police who monitors the things and people that disappear overnight. As the day breaks the islanders wake up confused as their memory no longer holds the image of whatever it is that disappeared. At different instances they look around confused trying to make sense of the void by gathering on the streets or by looking at each other in vain and finally going back to their usual schedule. The objects that disappear is either voluntarily given up or destroyed by the islanders themselves due to its unfamiliarity or if it somehow stays back is searched for, confiscated and destroyed by the Memory Police to do away with any lingering memory or evidence of the object’s presence.
Each disappearance opens up more than one interpretation for the reader. As ribbons, hat, perfumes and roses disappear they take away with them the right to leisure. As map, stamps and boats disappear the islanders have no way to make contact with the outside world. Each disappearance denies the citizens an option to know about the world outside or to make any kind of contact. As birds disappear they take away with them the nascent idea of being free in an otherwise unfathomably vast sky. With the disappearance of calendars goes the idea of keeping record of important days and marking important events. Gradually, anything that could provide a glimpse into the past or that could trigger one’s memory such as birds, roses, ribbons, words, novels, sculptures, photographs and cameras all vanish simultaneously from people’s mind and life.
The novel weaves a tragedy not in the event of these objects vanishing but with their disappearance from people’s memory. What stay back after these disappearances is only a sense of confusion, haziness and a blurred acknowledgement of something missing. There is no overwhelming grief or mourning their loss because there is nothing to remember and thereby to commemorate: the memory of it all is just a blank slate when peered into. As objects are mostly personalized, their disappearance in the text also means a loss of all feelings as well as memories that are related to it. The loss of memory leads to disassociation from every thought, visual and emotions related with the object and people who once owned/loved these objects. This is depicted graphically when the protagonist tries to remember her mother. Now dead, the unnamed protagonist’s mother was a sculptor who made statues and bust in the little studio that lies in the corner of their house. She spent most of her time working in the now secret studio. When times are tough the reader finds the protagonist in the studio going through her mother’s items now locked in the drawers after sculpting tools and sculptures were added to the long list of objects that disappeared. She finds herself unable to remember integral part of her mother. As she fumbles through her mother’s studio in silent nights we see her picking each tool in her hands and trying to feel them. She remembers in flashes, bits and pieces which fail to provide her with a sense of closure or solace. She ends up more confused and helpless. As the memory of her mother’s work and sculptures disappeared from her memory so does most of her mother as a person. A similar situation repeats when birds disappear and most of her father’s work too vanishes from her memory along with the birds. Her father, an ornithologist before his death used to study and write about birds. Most of the narrator’s childhood memories with her father were tied with the birds in their colorful plumage which no longer exist in the island. She finds herself without a centre whenever she tries to hark back these memories when she is alone. There are none to find, there is only emptiness in that place of the memory and confusion.
The manipulation and suppression of information by the Memory Police does not limit itself to objects disappearance. It further slates acts such as silencing its citizens who are unable to forget. These people who are immune to this tradition of forgetting even as things disappear are hunted and persecuted by the Memory Police. They live in fear, faking memory and the notion of forgetting. For those few who remember, other’s blank slate becomes a burden that they carried, in secret. The readers are presented with a list of things and people that vanished, what is not written in the novel is the aftermath- how others react to it, suppress it or deal with it.
The notion of memory forms an important theme in much of Ogawa’s work. Throughout The Memory Police the narrator herself is in the process of writing her third novel about a dumb typist girl who gradually loses her voice when her only medium of communication- a typewriter is taken from her. This story within a story narrates how the unnamed typist girl who is aspiring to be a novelist is betrayed by a person who otherwise is her guardian. For months she is locked in an attic full of damaged typewriters, hers being one amongst them where she gradually loses her identity. This story seems to be an allegory of the things that unfolds in the novel by Ogawa and with our own unnamed protagonist.
The book was translated into English 25 years by Stephen Snyder after it was first published in Japanese in 1994 and it immediately shot into prominence. A lot of its popularity has to do with the current socio political scenario of misinformation and manipulation. In an era of post-truth we see data or information that is circulated via digital media slowly but gradually poisoning the society especially after the Trump came to power. Information circulated among public is either manipulated by politicians or faked by bureaucrats and corporate honchos for their own personal gain. As social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram play an indispensable part in spreading (mis)information, the already debated idea of public memory and the way people chose to react and what they remember is further contested in Western literary field with the publication of this book’s English translation. Yoko Ogawa thus brings into forefront the notion of public memory and how it continues to be shaped and manipulated by those who wield power. The novel thus joins the list of modern writers such as George Orwell, Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera whose writing style and content can be broadly tagged as both Orwellian and Kafkaesque.
“Of-course it will. Each word you wrote will continue to exist as a memory, here in my heart, which will not disappear. You can be sure of that.”
