The Memory Police

It wasn't for me, but I'm still glad I read it. Ogawa's greyscale, slowly grinding dystopia gives the mind's eye a view of a world where epistemic injustice is extremely unsubtle, and still the people oppressed are unable to give voice to this, in fact directly because of it. The mechanics of the world don't quite make sense -maybe something lost in translation- but once you move past the small things that you think need answers and look at the bigger picture, things begin to take shape. Interesting questions about the setting and happenings of the narrative are left unanswered intentionally, and left as exercises to the reader. I was reminded throughout my reading of Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko- that being a 90s reaction to climate change and this a piece of dystopic literature, but the comparison seems apt to me because of the slow creep of impending doom. The eponymous Memory Police almost seem more like a force of nature run amok than anything human. A great book club read that generates lots of discussion regardless of whether you like it or not. I don't think I'll be returning to it, though.

The story was enjoyable enough which was good since there really isn't a massive underlying story going on. You do not get any answers as to what is going on. You are literally following the MC as she is experiencing things in her life disappear and you never know anything more than what she knows.

All the characters in this book are anonymous, no names are ever given, but it felt right and did not detract from being able to follow the story at all.

There is not some big "AH-HA" moment where everything clicks. For me, it came across that in the beginning, the MC is afraid of losing her editor/friend (who does not lose his memories) after having lost her parents. But on the flip side, her friend is watching her deteriorate bit by bit as the memories are taken from her and she begins to forget how to live. It's eerie because of how quickly and easily the forgetting is accepted, and there is an underlying tension through the entire book because at any moment, a memory can be erased.

Not one that I will have an interest in rereading again, but found it to be a good read.

I previously loved reading a collection of Yoko Ogawa's short stories, Revenge, so enthusiastically grabbed my copy of The Memory Police when it appeared on NetGalley. The novel was first published in Japanese twenty-five years ago and has only just been translated into English - an amazingly good job by the talented Stephen Snyder. The Memory Police is the novel that I had hoped If Cats Disappeared From The World would be - dark, mysterious, and, actual impossibility aside, scarily real.

Ogawa vividly portrays a science fiction dystopia where an island people have grown so used to abruptly being deprived of things that the loss of something more barely provokes a comment. Once deemed Disappeared, any surviving examples of an item are swiftly, voluntarily destroyed by the populace and once out of sight, these items are soon out of mind. The hatmaker retrains as an umbrella maker when hats Disappear. The ferryman is employed as a night watchman when boats Disappear. The words themselves quietly fade from the language and, soon, most people are rarely even aware they have lost anything at all. Except for those few unfortunates who find themselves genetically incapable of simply forgetting. These individuals who tempt danger by hiding Disappeared things are the prey of the Memory Police. Anyone caught also Disappears - dragged from their homes while their neighbours look the other way.

I couldn't help but think of Anne Frank's Diary while reading The Memory Police. I saw clear parallels with 1940s stories of hidden Jews and with the present-day re-emergence of fascist ideologies not only in authoritarian declarations of what is and is not considered acceptable to this society, but, more importantly, in the way most of the people seemed incapable of raising themselves to any form of resistance. Everything they had known was gradually being taken from them, but the prevailing wisdom was to make do and manage without, not to draw unwelcome attention to oneself, not to make a fuss.

The Memory Police is a superb depiction of human behaviour and manipulation. I loved the authenticity of Ogawa's characters. I could understand and empathise with all their actions and frequently found myself questioning how I might also react under those circumstances. I was completely enthralled from start to finish. There is an element of a fairytale to the storytelling style with the unnamed people on an unnamed wintry island. Aspects of their culture are recognisably Japanese, but this could be anyone anywhere. It's a haunting fable of how we construct our identities. How much of ourselves is determined by our memories? How free are we really if everything available to us is determined by someone else?

Exquisitely dystopian. Written in 1992, but not translated into English until 2019, this is a haunting and poignant tale of how important memory and voice are to freedom and sense of self.

The narrator is a young novelist who observes the things around her disappearing: perfume, jewels, ribbons, even birds and spring. More disturbing than their disappearance is the inability of people to remember those things once they are gone. The Memory Police roam the landscape, searching for the few folks who inexplicably can still remember what they've lost, and then they too vanish along with their memories.

The narrator/novelist is in the middle of writing a strange story about a typing teacher who locks away one of his students in a clock tower. The narrative echoes the increasing sense of isolation the narrator is experiencing in the larger novel. As the Memory Police escalate disappearances, the writer hides her editor in a secret room in her house, and he desperately tries to get her to keep writing. He is oblivious to the horrors happening outside of his hideaway.

Book burning always gets to me and it is described here with chilling elegance:
"The library continued to burn. I picked up one of the books from the pile at my feet and threw it out the window. It opened and flew through the air, cleared the underbrush and fell gently into the flames. The pages had caught the breeze, and it fluttered as it flew, as if dancing on air."

Authoritarian societies frequently take pains to destroy parts of their past that don't jibe with their current belief systems by burning books, pulling down statues, rewriting history, or by assassination. This is how they get people to behave. If we can't remember then we won't regret. And when we don't regret we are more apt to become willing subjects.

In a novel that feels like an allegory, Ogawa spins a complex and moving tale about the price a society pays when it silences its people, especially its writers. Her focus on the importance of memory is especially apt coming from a culture that maintains a strong sense of ancestry and tradition along side its vibrant contemporary sensibility. Nevertheless, it is a warning to democratic civilizations everywhere that freedom of expression is indispensable.

p.s. I didn't give the book 5 stars because the last type of disappearance seemed awkward and didn't work for me.

I have more complicated feelings about this than I expected to, as taken as I was with “[b:The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain|46138677|The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain|Yōko Ogawa|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650388340l/46138677.SX50.jpg|1888205],” a short story of Ogawa’s published about a decade after this novel was.

The prose often felt flat to me, and I wonder whether it's because -- at the risk of sharing too much and in an odd venue -- I've spent the pandemic feeling an increasing sense of derealization. I think this novel was doing something that I didn't appreciate until too close to the end, a feeling reinforced by reading “How ‘The Memory Police’ Makes You See,” a great review by Jia Tolentino. I’m also still learning to read deeply, and may still struggle with the stylistic choice to give a narrator a diegetic voice that doesn’t resonate with me immediately.

I think it’s still a great testament to a book’s force that you know you’ll continue thinking about it and want to revisit it, even if you can’t speak glowingly of it right away.