Nov 30, 20234 min read

Review: The Emissary by Yoko Tawada

I’m a simple man: I see the rare novel by a Japanese author in my local library’s e-book collection, I check it out. Because this is how I discovered the book, I didn’t have many expectations going into Yoko Tawada’s The Emissary, but its intriguing concept immediately gripped me. Tawada’s verbiage, in Margaret Mitsutani’s translation, echoes with a characteristic matter-of-fact melancholy which does not ask for pity despite the most distressing of circumstances.

The imagined future world of The Emissary is bleak and dusty, illustrated by an all-but-deserted Tokyo in which the remaining residents grow root vegetables behind public toilets in an effort to create a new token product to symbolize the city’s resilience in an unappetizing environment. The results are as one would expect. The shadows of hope hidden behind these ploys are achingly familiar; the well-intentioned rationalizations of humans suffering from climate disaster are misguided but necessary. The species of plants which survive have adapted and animals that were once abundant are gone, leading to the rise of Rent-A-Dog stores which “young-elderly” and “middle-age elderly” people, well into their seventies and more physically able than the younger generations, can use to acquire a four-legged partner for their morning jogs. I use the word “adapted,” though the book itself brings up the debate over diction; are dandelions, the new kind with petals no shorter than four inches, adaptations or mutations? Throughout the book, this question of how to assert the changes being undergone by living things extends to the characters themselves.

The protagonists are Yoshiro, a misty-eyed great-grandfather growing stronger by the day despite his century of winters, and Mumei, a great-grandson named for his own anonymity. Mumei, like the other children of this world, struggles with malnutrition and grows weaker and weaker under his great-grandfather’s desperate care. The book is filled with Yoshiro’s reminisces about the past, when the young were born strong, and the aged, well, aged. As Mumei chokes down orange juice and milk-soaked bread, the boy appears nearly robotic to his Yoshiro: enduring suffering without a complaint, and often asking tragic, innocent questions that exhibit how different his human experience is from those of generations before. Thankfully, Tawada fleshes out his character beyond the mere acceptance of his prerequisite of pain, through his internal musings on morphing his deformed body into an octopus sliding into his pajamas, and his eerie ability to read others' emotions, exhibiting an awareness beyond his years as he holds back questions which cause anxiety for his caretaker. Through Yoshio’s eyes, we also learn more about the way their family has dissolved—an interesting rumination on familial bonds in this isolated, soft-apocalyptic world.

Like many of the short novels of modern Japanese literature, The Emissary illustrates a wide world in a concise frame. The story ends quickly, and the reader may be left wanting for a more satisfying conclusion. This is not because Tawada did not express enough about the world around Yoshiro and Mumei, but because the novel tries to tackle too much. There are themes of family abandonment, shifting societal roles, aging, nationalism, gender, and climate disaster all rolled into one small package, and the end of the novel makes the reader feel like some of these expansive ideas have been touched upon with little assertion beyond their introduction. The way that society has had to adapt to its new physical environment is fascinating, and though some of the earlier descriptions of adapted (mutated?) behavior felt quite exaggerated, I think Tawada’s examinations of the consequences of long life and familial ties in the face of nationalism and climate change were a helpful meditation for the world we now inhabit.

There are definite gaps in the resolution of the story, but I’ll be thinking about Tawada’s world for a while. The perpendicular realities of Yoshiro and Michio, along with the input of other characters, create a visceral and strange vision of our future. Perhaps The Emissary serves best as a primer, the warm front which brings a brainstorm on these issues. When I think of it in this way, I am more comfortable nestling into the sense of immense satisfaction this short novel brought me, despite its flaws. I recommend The Emissary to fans of speculative fiction and Japanese literature who can find meaning in the whimsical bleakness that Tawada has beautifully wrought through this story.