A Slowly Disintegrating World

In the vast ambit of literature, dystopian literature has created its niche. From the publication of the first recognized dystopian novel, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921), this genre has, over the recent years, developed into a major literary genre. Collectively, we have become so engrossed with what the future holds that more writers followed suit. In 1932, Aldous Huxley published one of the quintessential works of the genre, Brave New World. An even more vivid portrait was painted by George Orwell in his 1949 classic, Nineteen Eighty-Four. All of these works are hallmarks of the genre and are considered by many as literary classics. They are even included in several must-read lists. They write about worlds that are bleak and even brutal, worlds gripped in pandemonium and discord. But these are worlds, with what is happening around the world, that we are slowly inching toward.

Dystopian literature also remains a germane genre and has even become more popular in the contemporary. It has even been fused with other literary genres, such as young adult fiction which saw the rise of popular trilogies such as Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy, Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy, and Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy. Some have even been adapted into films. Even popular writer Margaret Atwood has also been contributing her voice to this prominent genre. The Handmaid’s Tale is another hallmark of dystopian literature. Japanese writers have also been making their contributions. Yōko Ogawa’s 1994 novel 密やかな結晶 (Hisoyaka na Kesshō) echoes elements of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Its English translation, The Memory Police (2019) was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and was also a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Ogawa’s namesake and fellow countrywoman, Yōko Tawada (多和田葉子) also added her take through a couple of dystopian novels, including The Last Children of Tokyo. Originally published in 2014 as 献灯使 (Kentoshi), the novel was made available to Anglophone readers in 2018 through a translation by Margaret Mitsutani; it was published with the alternative title The Emissary in the United States. The Last Children of Tokyo takes the readers to a near-future Tokyo which has been virtually inundated. The metropolis is a far cry from what it is today. Tokyo, and Japan in general, has secluded itself from the rest of the world following an unspecified devastating man-made global catastrophe. Due to this disastrous event, the environment has been contaminated and the once-bustling metropolis that is Tokyo has been declared unsafe, prompting its denizens to disperse to other parts of the country.

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.

Yōko Tawada, The Last Children of Tokyo

Tawada’s dystopian vision of Tokyo (and by extension, Japan) is Yoshiro who lives on the outskirts of the city. Yoshiro is a novelist and is among Tokyo’s aged-elderly, a term referring to denizens of the city who are already centenarians. Contrary to expectations, despite his age, Yoshiro lives a very active lifestyle. As part of his daily routine, he rents a dog to be his jogging companion. Jogging early in the morning is his way of burning excess energy before the day even began. Interestingly, the novel opens with his dilemma of choosing the right dog to jog with him. On top of this, he takes care of his house on his own. But Yoshiro is not living alone. Yoshiro has taken over the responsibility of looking after his great grandson Mumei who was orphaned at a young age.

It is palpable that there are stark dichotomies between the two main characters. As an effect of the global disaster, Yoshiro is part of a generation with super healthy genes that allowed them to live way beyond their life expectancy. They reek of vitality and they rarely get sick. There are also very little signs of death approaching. Tawada writes about their condition as if it is something not out-of-the-ordinary. Meanwhile, Mumei was born into a generation that is the antithesis of his great grandfather’s. Yoshiro’s generation was succeeded by generations with increasingly feeble health. While Yoshiro’s generation was robust with health, Mumei’s generation was prone to sickness. Most of Mumei’s peers suffer from intolerance to a wide variety of food. Due to the lack of calcium intake, several young children have malformed teeth and severely deformed bones.

It has become inherent in Yoshiro’s part to understand the fragility of his great grandson’s body. He has become mindful of the food that he prepares for Mumei. He meticulously prepares a breakfast meal that Mumei can safely consume. He squeezes the juice from an orange and then cut it into tiny pieces his great-grandson can actually chew. Due to having trouble retaining nutrients from the limited food that they can consume, Mumei’s generation are often too weak for sustained physical activity. As such, Yoshiro also accompanies Mumei to and from school; he is in second grade. Due to his generation’s diminished physical vitality, Mumei struggles to perform even the simplest daily tasks such as walking short distances or even eating the food he needed to survive.

When he walks to school, Mumei’s energy fails to sustain him, prompting his great grandfather to simply put him in the back carrier of his bicycle and drive him the rest of the way. It was a grim reality but Mumei’s body is nothing but a fragile shell. His body won’t allow him to support his life. This has not failed to break Yoshiro’s heart: Whenever he tried to imagine the years Mumei would have to go on living after his own death, Yoshiro ran straight into a wall.  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 the terrible task of watching their great-grandchildren die. For Yoshiro, however, him looking after his great grandson was not only born out of duty but innate affection for him and his generation.

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.

Yōko Tawada, The Last Children of Tokyo

The story of Yoshiro and Mumei provides a bleak vision of the future. Their story was juxtaposed on a state that is veering toward inevitable collapse. As much as their story was the novel’s backbone, finer details on the background propelled the story. In layered but subtle way, Tawada painted a bleak portrait that was to be the mantle of the story. The novel underscored a plethora of contemporary social and environmental concerns that hound the world. In Tawada’s dystopia, Tokyo is a microcosm of these growing global concerns; unmitigated pollution made it impossible to live within its ambit. Several trees have become sick. Wild animals have either become extinct or have become rare. This also points to a very timely subject, climate change. Climate change has rendered Honshu, Japan’s main island, unlivable. This, in turn, resulted into the rise of prominence of the outlying islands, particularly Okinawa and Hokkaido.

The follies of politics were also intricately woven into the deceptively thin novel. The Japanese government was privatized in the throes of the tumult caused by the catastrophe. The government then imposed self-isolation. But this is a measure that does not only apply to the Japanese government as every other country raced to address their individual concerns: Every country has serious problems, so to keep those problems from spreading around the world, they decided that each country should solve its own problems by itself. However, with this concentration of power comes abuse. The novel is a haunting portrait of an increasingly authoritarian regime where excessive control has stymied the population. For instance, the younger generation was forbidden to learn foreign words; the usage of foreign-language terms, especially English, was restricted. Self-censorship was also rampant lest previously legal activities have become illicit.

These details capture a landscape that is forced to transform to keep up with the changing tides. This resulted in Japan’s inevitable demographic and cultural shifts. In dealing with this subject, linguistics was played a prominent and interesting role. Some holidays were renamed to be sensible: 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 Children Day”; “Sports Day” was changed to “Body Day” to avoid upsetting children who were not growing up big and strong; so as not to hurt the feelings of young people who wanted to work but simply weren’t strong enough, “Labor Day” became “Being Alive Is Enough Day.” Some words have become obsolete. The word healthy has lost its meaning. The Japanese are no longer writing in katakana, another measure to eliminate anything that is of foreign origin.

Beyond these plethora of subjects the novel deal with, the story’s main focus is the fate of the children and the older generation. This is an echo of the current Japanese demographics where dwindling birth rates have resulted into an “ageing” population. The Japanese countryside have slowly been abandoned as the younger generation either moved to the cities or refused to conceive. This is a growing concern. But herein lies the genius of Tawada’s storytelling. Rather than take the conventional route, Tawada flips the script and instead paints the portrait of a society where the old are prompted to look after the young. The older generation had to take over as the younger generation lacks responsible voices. Their case was exacerbated by a generation of invalids. Elsewhere, the book is a scathing commentary on rapid urbanization and growing consumerism.

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.

Yōko Tawada, The Last Children of Tokyo

The future for Mumei and his generation seemed unclear. Nevertheless, the relationship between Yoshiro and Mumei remained tender and heartwarming. There are glimpses of hope. Across the country, adults nominate gifted children for a program run by the secretive Emissary Association. The association stows away youths abroad to research the health of young people. It is a last ditch effort to save the “last children of Tokyo.” Further, Tokyo remains a center of population, a well of hope that flourishes despite the vestiges of catastrophe it is surrounded with. It has slowly disintegrated. Social services were dismantled. Public transportation was virtually nonexistent. And yet, Yoshiro can’t bring himself to leave the city. Despite its decline, Tokyo is still home to many vibrant communities.

Still, there is a want for information that lingers. Details of what happened are scant. One is left to wonder what happened that led to the breakdown of societies and nations. Tawada does not provide any context as to the root cause of the tragedy. The source of the devastation that swept the world was kept ambiguous. Further, one also becomes curious about what happens beyond the borders of self-contained Japan. One, however, can surmise that all of these omissions and ambiguity were deliberate. It keeps the readers’ interest occupied. Further, Tawada was less interested in the cause of the catastrophe when all the symptoms are ubiquitous in the contemporary. After all, her interest lies in how the characters cope with the transformations and shifts within an increasingly dystopian society.

Deceptively slender, The Last Children of Tokyo is a multilayered story that covers a vast territory of subject germane in contemporary Japanese society. Through the story of Yoshiro and Mumei, Tawada paints a bleak portrait of a society on the brink of collapse, where trees have become sick, wild animals have become virtually extinct, and succeeding generations, supposedly the beacons of hope for the future, have lost their spark. While the story is set in the future, Tawada’s diagnosis is increasingly becoming plausible. However, The Last Children of Tokyo does not reduce itself into a mere portrait of Tawada’s bleak vision of the future. Thought-provoking and astutely insightful, the novel is an indictment of how we treated our world. It subtly calls for action lest these visions step out of the world of fiction and become reality.

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.

Yōko Tawada, The Last Children of Tokyo
Book Specs

Author: Yōko Tawada (多和田葉子)
Translator (from Japanese): Margaret Mitsutani
Publisher: Granta Books
Publishing Date: 2018 (2014)
Number of Pages: 138
Genre: Dystopian, Literary, Speculative

Synopsis

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 air and sea were poisoned, before terrible catastrophe prompted Japan to shut itself off from the rest of the world. Yoshiro 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 ingenuity 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?

About the Author

To learn more about the award-winning Japanese writer Yōko Tawada, click here.