The Emissary by Yoko Tawada, translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani, New Directions, 2018
Reviewed by Ben Saff, Responsive Layout Designer
If you have ever walked into a house of mirrors, you may remember the uncomfortable feeling of seeing your reflection staring back at you. Your forehead is ten times its normal size, your nose is reduced to a pin point, and your limbs appear like wavy ribbons upon the curving surface of the mirrors. What’s disturbing about the reflection is that it still kind of looks like you—it’s a believable image. In The Emissary (originally published as Kentōshi (献灯使)), Yoko Tawada conjures this exact effect, presenting an image of her native country of Japan that is nightmarish, surreal, and just a little too possible for comfort.
The story follows the two main characters, Mumei and his great-grandfather, Yoshiro, as they carry out their daily lives in a post-nuclear disaster Japan. In the aftermath the land and the surrounding sea have become saturated with radioactive contamination. The Japanese government has closed its borders, imposing a strict isolation policy that echoes the Sakoku of the Edo Period. Without access to the outside world, the people are forced to rely on a government that seems to have abandoned them, and they suffer on account of it. Yet Tawada provides a glint of hope through the thoughts of a ruminating character: “The sizable number of Japanese pirates suggested that there was no gene for isolation.”
Throughout the story, artifacts of social tension appear that resonate with our modern political climate. Women in a coffee shop talk together and the phrase “putting profit before public health” rises above the din. Tawada paints the social landscape of post-disaster Japan and the common people fill the bottom of the canvas, disenfranchised and abandoned by their government: “Although no one had heard anything about an evacuation of the Diet or the Supreme Court, the buildings that had housed them were definitely not in use. They were empty shells.” In the wake of the nuclear disaster and facing financial ruin, the Japanese government privatized itself, seeking stability in the money of corporations. Laws are changed often and for no given reason. The people conduct themselves cautiously, in fear that they may break a new law that has been created without their knowledge. Tawada takes the trends in our modern world – a recoil from globalization, democratic values superseded and eroded by corporate interest, an abandoned common people—and following them to their extremes. She weighs in through the thoughts of Yoshiro: “Wealth, rank don’t have the value of a single blade of grass.”
Part of what makes The Emissary a distinct and timely work is its focus on the dynamics of language, imagining how language can be warped in extreme social circumstances. Translator Margaret Mitsutani succeeds in preserving much of Tawada’s play of Japanese linguistics into English. In post-disaster Japan, the word “mutation” has dropped out of use in favor of “environmental adaptation.” Arigato, a familiar phrase of thanks, is now avoided due to the feeling of guilt it evokes in the elder generation, who feel collectively responsible for the disaster. As a result of the new isolation policy, the study of foreign language has been forbidden and forgotten. Katakana, the set of characters Japanese use for foreign words, are seen plastered on the Rent-a-Dog store, reduced to an anachronism. Tawada underlines the importance of language as a cultural currency and imagines its stagnation in an internationally isolated Japan: “[W]ith no language it could export, Japan had come to an impasse.”
In the exposition of The Emissary, Tawada remains remarkably subtle and restrained. The story reads like a nightmare unfolding in a fog. Rather than direct description, Tawada reveals little pieces of the world through subtle remarks and allusions. The mother of the young protagonist, Mumei, is mentioned in passing by the narrator as having been “reduced to ash.” Chilling new holidays are mentioned amongst characters: “Offline day”—the day the internet died, “Bone Day”—a day to remember the importance of calcium. The proprietress of a postcard shop plants weeds—yes, even weeds are nearing extinction—in a garden of artificial dirt. By the end, the nightmarish setting has been fully revealed, not by any precise moment but through a slowly building intuition. The style immerses you into the dystopian world. You hear about disaster and its effects as the characters living in the world do: as a mundane fact of life, a commonality, an ever-avoided topic, like the certainty of death.
But the world of The Emissary is not all doom and gloom. Tawada preserves the virtues of humanity and embodies them in the two main characters of the book, Yoshiro and Mumei. Mumei is an elementary school student and a member of the new generation of Japan. Born after the nuclear disaster, the new generation is characterized by weak, deformed, and disproportionate bodies. Despite his deteriorating condition, Mumei is light-hearted, cheerful, and resilient. At one point in the novel, he is losing his baby teeth at a concerning rate. After a dentist appointment, it is Mumei who consoles his great-grandfather, Yoshiro: “Don’t worry, Great-grandpa, sparrows get along fine without teeth, you know.” Later in the novel, Mumei notices his neighbor in a wheelchair and clad in a solar energy propelled muscle suit and is instantly struck by her beauty, telling his great-grandfather so. In Mumei we feel a warmth and a wisdom, something simple, pure, and undeniably good. And Mumei is as imaginative as he is optimistic. While Mumei gets ready for school the narrator reveals Mumei’s thoughts:
Mumei always worried about his clothes, afraid they’d get up and leave in the middle of the night. He was beside himself picturing his shirt downing cocktails at some nightclub, his trousers dancing up a storm until they finally traipsed back home, dirty and wrinkled.
In another scene, Mumei stares at his great-grandfather’s calendar, marked with an upcoming lecture on the “Naumann Mammoth” and sees the word scrawled upon it as an animal that would start moving if only he stared long enough. Tawada uses Mumei as the embodiment of pure youth and all of its accompanying virtues. Through Mumei, the reader feels a sense of a hope, a beacon glowing in the grim reality of post-disaster Japan.
Yoshiro takes care of Mumei with a vigilant eye. He helps him dress, eat, walks him to school, and carries him when Mumei can’t walk any further. Yoshiro is a member of the elder generation, all of whom are perfectly, miraculously healthy. In fact, they seem to be able to live forever. The elder generation are responsible for Japan’s nuclear disaster, and in its wake, they must watch as their progeny, the new generation, suffers and dies off. In this world, the elder generation of Japan must face the long-term consequences of their actions – not even death is an escape. But in Yoshiro we see a steadfast compassion and will to live, not for himself, but for the future generation, for his great-grandson.
Most of Yoshiro’s family is gone—his wife, Marika, has found a higher purpose at an orphanage, his grandson lost in gambling addiction, his granddaughter (Mumei’s mother) reduced to dust by the mysterious disaster. In the wake of a broken family, Mumei and Yoshiro grow a loving companionship. The two find a private harmony amidst the chaos of post-disaster Japan. Their relationship stands out against the bleak background of The Emissary, like a single sprout in a field of ash. Tawada allows us to meditate on the importance of family. In the happiest moment a family is reunited: “The trio’s happiness exploded into joyous fireworks as they jumped around like rabbits in springtime.” The Emissary is ultimately a novel of reflection, a warped image of Japan that stretches its modern vices into an all too possible vision of the future. But it is not an image without hope. In Mumei we see resiliency, tenderness, and an unbridled imagination. The Emissary urges us to keep that imagination close to our hearts and put it to work, to envision a better future for ourselves and the generations to come.
Ben Saff is an avid reader, writer, musician, and technologist living in Philadelphia. He is a Responsive Layout Designer at Asymptote. He is the vocalist and guitarist of his online music project, Kintsugi.
*****
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