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Summary
Summary
Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day routine in what could be viewed as a post-Fukushima time, with all the children born ancient--frail and gray-haired, yet incredibly compassionate and wise. Mumei may be enfeebled and feverish, but he is a beacon of hope, full of wit and free of self-pity and pessimism. Yoshiro concentrates on nourishing Mumei, a strangely wonderful boy who offers "the beauty of the time that is yet to come."
A delightful, irrepressibly funny book, The Emissary is filled with light. Yoko Tawada, deftly turning inside-out "the curse," defies gravity and creates a playful joyous novel out of a dystopian one, with a legerdemain uniquely her own.
Author Notes
Born in Tokyo in 1960,Yoko Tawada writes in both Japanese and German: she has received the Akutagawa, Kleist, Lessing, Noma, Adelbert von Chamisso, and Tanizaki prizes, as well as the Goethe Medal. Her novel The Emissary won the National Book Award. Rivka Galchen in the New York Times Magazine hailed her work as magnificently strange." Margaret Mitsutani is a translator of Yoko Tawada (sharing her National Book Award) and Kenzaburo Oe (Japan's 1994 Nobel Prize laureate)."
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
An anxious writer frets over his wastrel of a great-grandson in this inventive dystopian novel from Tawada (Memoirs of a Polar Bear). Its environment "irreversibly contaminated," near-future Japan has been cut off from the outside world, leaving 108-year-old Yoshiro trapped with his great-grandson Mumei in a spartan "temporary" house. The population is divided between those born before the calamity-whose life spans have been mysteriously lengthened-and those enfeebled by it: "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." Yoshiro dreams of escape, but it is Mumei who, despite his inability to walk or chew properly, is selected as one of several "especially bright children to send abroad as emissaries." Mumei's deteriorating condition is signalled by his hair turning grey, and soon he begins having difficulty breathing. These health problems complicate his potential deployment; while he awaits a decision, he turns to the more urgent task of comforting Yoshiro. Tawada's novel is infused with the anxieties of a "society changing at the speed of pebbles rolling down a steep hill," yet she imagines a ruined world with humor and grace. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
In this slim, impactful novel, surrealist master Tawada (Memoirs of a Polar Bear, 2016, etc.) imagines a dystopian Japan reckoning with its own identity.In the wake of an economic and environmental tragedy that eerily echoes 2011's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster, the Japanese government implements an "isolation policy," cutting the country off from the outside world. Central Tokyo is deserted, the country's soil is contaminated, its plants have mutated, and its people are living under a capricious governing body that has not only waged a war on words (the term "mutation" having been replaced by the more agreeable "environmental adaptation"), but has proven to have a penchant for tinkering with the laws: "Afraid of getting burned by laws they couldn't see, everyone kept their intuition honed as sharp as a knife, practicing restraint and self-censorship on a daily basis." A writer unsettled by the turn his country has taken, Yoshiro's main concern is the declining health of his grandson, Mumei. In this new era, children are wise beyond their years, but their bodies are brittle, aging vessels, and the elderly have become a new kind of species, cursed with the gift of everlasting life, "burdened with the terrible task of watching their great-grandchildren die." Left in Yoshiro's care after the death of his mother and disappearance of his father, Mumei, feeble (and toothless) as he is, fills his grandfather's interminable days with life. Despite the gloomy circumstances, Tawada's narrative remains incandescent as she charts the hopeful paths both grandfather and grandson embark upon in their attempt to overcome mortality's grim restraints. Striving to persist in a time when intolerance abounds and "the shelf life of words [is] getting shorter all the time," Mumei's searching curiosity and wonder toward the world inspire faith that, even in the darkest of days, humanity cannot be forsaken.An ebullient meditation on language and time that feels strikingly significant in the present moment. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Tawada (Memoirs of a Polar Bear, 2016) offers an airily beautiful dystopian novella about mortality. After a disaster, Japan isolates itself from the rest of the world in the hope of containing the fallout. In this post-disaster Japan, the elderly are strong and sprightly, cursed with a long life of caring for a generation of feeble great-grandchildren, born with grey hair, weak joints, and poor constitutions. Yoshiro cares for his great-grandson Mumei, whose mouth bleeds when he eats and whose knock-knees make walking near impossible. Yet as Yoshiro's heart breaks over Mumei's waning health, his spirit is uplifted by the child's inability to feel self-pity or pessimism and his unyielding hope and ageless wisdom. Tawada's quirky style and ability to jump from realism to abstraction manages to both chastise humanity for the path we are taking towards destruction and look hopefully toward an unknown future. This may be a short read, but Tawada's disciplined conservation of words makes it all the more powerful.--Essien, Enobong Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Japanese-born, Germany-based Tawada (Memoirs of a Polar Bear) writes facilely in both languages and creates incomparable award-winning fiction that defies easy labels. Tawada's latest in translation (smoothly rendered by Mitsutani, who also translated one of Tawada's earliest works, the three-storied The Bridegroom Was a Dog) introduces a symbiotically bonded duo who are a century apart in age. At almost 108, Yoshiro still jogs every morning for half an hour-with a rented dog. His reason for (still) living is Mumei, his daughter's son's son-to get him up, dressed, mandarin-juiced, out the door to practice walking a few steps, then biked the rest of the way to his elementary school. In this alternate future, everything-soil, sky, oceans-is potentially poisoned, most animals have disappeared, and even the children face extinction. Only the elderly seems to have long, long life-perhaps more curse than blessing as they bear the responsibility for being guardians to fragile, weakened new generations unprepared for survival. And yet despite his seemingly truncated prognosis, Mumei's outlook remains full of insight and charm. VERDICT Blending fairy tale, dystopian warning, peculiar mystery, cultural critique, and multigenerational family saga, Tawada's latest literary, linguistic mélange should satiate even the most discerning international fiction aficionados.-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
