However, what makes Ogawa's approach to this material most unique is that, despite certainly being a book about characters who struggle to survive under the rule of an Orwellian government, it's never entirely clear to the reader how the oppressive force in this novel operates. For that matter, even in spite of the very real dangers that Ogawa's characters face over the course of this text, it's never clear to the reader whether or not this oppressive force which drives much of the plot truly exists in a manner that is external to the book's characters, or whether it exists more as a result of the collective actions of everyone in the community in which the story is set. There is an ambiguity at the heart of Ogawa's story that eventually becomes just as disturbing as any Orwellian dictatorship ever could be, with this book essentially examining the manner in which a person's own thoughts and knowledge can be tools by which they might be controlled by others. Moreover, Ogawa ultimately shows how this control is dangerous precisely because of how difficult it is to detect -- a form of oppression that may very well be impossible to resist.
The Memory Police (Plot Summary)
The central protagonist of The Memory Police is unnamed. Established to be a novelist living in an island community isolated from the rest of the world, the book's narrator tells this story entirely in first-person, often deliberately taking steps to obscure both her and others' identities from the reader. As the novel opens, the narrator relates a conversation she once had with her mother when she was a child. In this scene, she learns how items and ideas on the island regularly "disappear" -- an event which immediately prompts every citizen of the island to (seemingly) forget that item ever existed. These disappearances occur at random, with there seeming to be very little logic regarding what is and is not lost. One day calendars might disappear, and then several weeks later hats, with life on the island slowly being eroded away by this invisible, omnipresent force.
However, in this scene the narrator's mother then reveals that she has secretly collected many of these vanished items -- being one of the few people on the island capable of remembering these things after they've been forgotten. In an attempt to introduce her daughter to these "vanished memories," the narrator's mother presents her with each of these objects, naming them, and then describing their function to her in the hope that her daughter might learn what they are. Yet, while the narrator is capable of recognizing the existence of each item her mother shows her, she claims to be unable to draw any meaning from these things, and says to the reader:
Ribbon, bell, emerald, stamp. The words that came from my mother's mouth thrilled me, like the names of little girls from distant countries or new species of plants. As I listened to her talk, it made me happy to imagine a time when all these things had a place here on the island.Yet that was also rather difficult to do. The objects in my palm seemed to cower there, absolutely still, like little animals in hibernation, sending me no signal at all. They often left me with an uncertain feeling, as though I were trying to make images of the clouds in the sky out of modeling clay. (p.5)
Via this scene, Ogawa deliberately introduces an ambiguity into her story's core concept, with it never being entirely clear to the reader exactly what it means when the narrator says that something has "disappeared" from the island. Not only do vanished objects continue to physically exist on the island, but the narrator herself is entirely capable of learning of these items, and recognizing them after they have supposedly "disappeared." Rather, she implies in this scene that it's something much more fundamental that vanishes when an object is forgotten, saying that she feels "uncertain" when confronted with such an item's existence.
Decades later, the narrator is an adult living alone in her childhood home. Her mother has been presumed dead for years after she was taken away for "questioning" by officers of the Memory Police -- a secretive organization whose members arrived on the island, and then promptly began violently enforcing the disappearances that now seem to occur on practically a monthly basis. Working as a novelist who writes books for the island's only library, the narrator lives in fear of being arrested by the Memory Police herself, watching as this organization's rule over the island and its citizens grows stronger every day.
The core plot of The Memory Police begins when the narrator learns that the editor of her next book (a man referred to in the text only as "R") possesses the same ability as her mother to recall vanished objects. As a result, R is in danger of being arrested by the Memory Police if this fact about him becomes known, and he approaches the narrator asking for help. Enlisting the assistance of an elderly friend whom she refers to only as "the Old Man," the narrator decides to construct a secret room in her basement where she can keep R hidden (the very basement where her mother once hid vanished items). In this way all three of these characters begin their own quiet rebellion against not only the Memory Police, but also against the disappearances themselves. While the narrator works to keep R safe and avoid suspicion, R himself works to find a way to help both the narrator and the Old Man counteract the disappearances and trigger the vanished memories he's sure they still possess.
This main storyline is mirrored with a secondary parallel narrative taking place in the book that the narrator is writing with R's help -- an equally surreal story that (at least initially) follows a typist who loses her voice and goes on a quest of sorts to find it. At times echoing the main narrative, while at other times directly contrasting with it, this secondary "novel within a novel" eventually comes to represent the narrator's own struggles to articulate both her experiences, as well as those of R as their lives continue under Memory Police rule. As a result, Ogawa's story eventually charts the manner in which her narrator uses her own chosen medium of art to better conceptualize her existence, all while the island's disappearances continue, and her very thoughts and memories are consumed by this invisible, unknowable force which possesses near complete control over her very mind itself.
Main Review
The most striking thing about Ogawa's approach to The Memory Police is that the Memory Police as a totalitarian organization are not technically the subject of this book's plot. Rather, the core conflict of the story derives instead from the more immediate daily struggles of the narrator, the Old Man, and R. In fact, the book's original Japanese title (密やかな結晶 ~ Hisoyaka na Kesshou) does not technically translate as The Memory Police, but instead as "The Hidden Crystal," possibly a reference to a moment in the opening scene in which the narrator's mother attempts unsuccessfully to introduce her daughter to several vanished objects which include (among many other items) an emerald. Kesshou (結晶), or "Crystal" is in this context a difficult word to interpret in English, since it can carry a double meaning. In Japanese, the word can be used to refer to both actual crystals, as well as to the end result of some sort of sustained or "crystalized" effort. In essence, this means that "The Hidden Crystal" could also be read as "The Hidden Struggle."
Similarly, Ogawa focuses much of the action of this story not on any overt act of rebellion against the Memory Police, but instead on the day-to-day life of her protagonist as she works to protect R from arrest and struggles to continue her life as usual (lest R's presence in her home be discovered). The story's focus is best demonstrated by the way that Ogawa continually examines the narrator's relationship with R, quietly asking the reader to reconsider the dynamic between these two characters. Initially, the reader may be inclined to view the narrator's efforts to keep R hidden as a heroic sacrifice on her part -- an act of generosity that entails tremendous personal risk as she defies the Memory Police's authority by harboring someone who can resist the disappearances. Yet, soon after having taken R into her home, the narrator begins subtly contemplating the tremendous power imbalance that has developed in their friendship. While certainly acting to save R's life, she has essentially also turned herself into his captor and now controls every aspect of R's existence in much the same manner that the Memory Police do her own.
The narrator responds to this power imbalance by behaving in a way that not only prompts the reader to reexamine the ethics of her actions, but also occasionally even to question her motives in saving R's life. In one scene in particular, the narrator enters the hidden room where R is staying and (finding that he has naturally grown bored from spending days hidden in her cellar) suggests that he might spend his time polishing her silverware for her. Later, she returns to the secret room and finds that R has completely dedicated himself to this task, becoming entirely subsumed with the job the narrator has given him. The narrator then responds by relating a story to R that she once had heard about the servants of wealthy families who had been commanded to spend days doing nothing but polishing silver -- even the act of speech having been forbidden lest they cloud the silverware with their breath. Upon finishing this bizarre and slightly off-putting tale, the narrator quietly notes to the reader how frail R has become after days in hiding, and then continues by telling the person she has just told to polish her silverware how these servants eventually lost even the ability to speak.
"The thing that I found most surprising," I said, taking up the story, "was that over time, the servants who did this work lost the power of speech. After many long days, dawn to dusk, rubbing their cloths in that stone room, they actually became mute. They had no fear of clouding the silver with their words, for even after they finished work and left the room, they could no longer recall the sound of their own voices. But these were poor, uneducated people who were unlikely to find work elsewhere, so they continued polishing year after year, willing to sacrifice their voices for a steady income. And the room became quieter and quieter as one after another lost the power of speech, with nothing to be heard but the muffled sound of cloth on silver. But I wonder how it got to that point." (p.122-123)
Via unsettling moments like this, Ogawa calls into question basic facets of the narrator's relationship to R, all while quietly asking the reader to consider how the narrator's words reflect on the wider situation that her characters face. Regularly throughout the story, the narrator behaves toward R in such a way that seems to imply she is intentionally calling attention not only to the tremendous power imbalance inherent in their new relationship, but also to the ways in which her new relationship with R mirrors her own situation living under Memory Police rule in unexpected and often disturbing ways.
This is demonstrated most notably via the novel which the narrator is actively writing over the course of Ogawa's book. The chapters of the narrator's novel often alternate with those of the main storyline, creating parallels that subtly begin influencing each other as each plot progresses. Initially introduced as a love story about a woman who loses her voice, shortly after the narrator takes R into her home, the events of this secondary story grow sinister. The protagonist of the narrator's novel uses a typewriter to communicate, and when this machine breaks down, she goes to her unnamed lover (a typing instructor) for help. This man then promptly reveals that it was he all along who had "stolen her voice." He then immediately discards the machine that had become her only method of communication, locking her away in a secret room hidden above the church where he had previously given her typing lessons (a room that is itself filled with the remains of typewriters used by previous women this man had captured). There, the protagonist of the narrator's novel is forced to listen as in the room below her, her captor continues the typing lessons that she herself once had received, secretly stealing the voices of still more women while she listens, unable to call out a warning or even a cry for help.
The way in which the narrator's novel relates to the main storyline of The Memory Police is complex. At times, the narrator seems to cast herself in the role of her own protagonist's captor, while R's situation seems reminiscent of that of the typist in the narrator's story who has been locked away in a "hidden room." At other times, the comparison seems to reverse, with the "lost knowledge" that R possesses regarding the numerous vanished objects on the island being characterized almost as a world in itself -- a realm that the narrator (much like her fictional protagonist locked away in a hidden room) can never reach no matter how hard she tries. In the end, it's this complexity that allows The Memory Police function to so well. Events in the main text clearly impact those in the narrator's novel, and vice versa, with both stories collectively highlighting the way in which the narrator is using her own chosen medium of art to better understand both her experiences and R's.
Meanwhile, the disappearances on the island grow more and more frequent, and soon the narrator and The Old Man (who had previously helped the narrator build the secret room for R) both realize that merely surviving under the rule of the Memory Police is not enough. Turning to R for help, they devote themselves to the task of trying to find a way to subvert these disappearances, with R doing his best to introduce both the narrator and The Old Man to those vanished items which the narrator's mother once worked to preserve.
In one particularly significant scene, the narrator and the Old Man study a vanished object introduced to them as an orugoru -- an item which is later revealed to be a "music box" (translator Stephen Snyder cleverly leaving the Japanese word untranslated until the nature of the object is revealed to these characters). Setting to work confronting the vacancy that the disappearance of music boxes have left in their minds, the narrator and the Old Man attempt to listen to this box's music in an effort to reacquaint themselves with this item. Unexpectedly they do find that they can recall the music box's existence over longer and longer periods of time the more they encounter it. Yet, as in the case of the book's opening chapter, the narrator treats her confrontation with a vanished object in deliberately ambiguous terms. It's not so much that she lacks the ability to perceive a music box, or even for that matter that she is incapable of retaining memories of a music box's existence. Rather, the narrator simply claims to the reader that listening to a music box is too exhausting for her, and that on a basic level she cannot understand how to interact with the item placed in front of her, even if she does know that it exists.
When we'd finished eating, the old man went to find the music box hidden in the bathroom. He set it on the table and we listened together. As always, it faithfully repeated its tune, over and over. We stopped chatting, sat up straight, and closed our eyes. I had no idea where or how one was supposed to listen to a music box, but I had decided arbitrarily that closing my eyes would enhance the effect R had hoped it would induce in us.The melody that flowed from the box was simple but pure and sweet. That much I could feel. But I had no confidence that it would be able to check the exhaustion that was overtaking my soul. Because once it had been sucked beneath the surface of that bottomless swamp, it left no trace at all, no ripple, no fleck of foam. (p.194)
The ambiguity regarding how the narrator describes her encounters with vanished objects is compounded by numerous other scenes throughout the story where basic aspects of what it means for an object to vanish are called into question. While Ogawa's prose strongly implies the island's disappearances to be supernatural in some way (occurring spontaneously and without reason for nearly all the island's residents), she never goes so far as to outright state that her characters cannot resist these disappearances. Regularly throughout the story, the narrator describes vanished objects as simply ceasing to exist, and yet when we as readers first witness a disappearance early on in the book, it becomes clear that vanished items don't merely disappear on their own, but rather are destroyed by the island's residents in public bonfires overseen by the Memory Police (a detail which the narrator tends to gloss over in the text).
Similarly, while the narrator herself continually claims that she has no memory of objects once they have vanished, on multiple occasions she makes direct reference to vanished items, often seeming not to realize she's doing so. Rather than appearing as inconsistencies in the story, the ambiguity in how Ogawa approaches the nature of the disappearances continually draws her reader's attention back to the core premise of her novel, and to the question of what it is that vanishes when an object disappears. This is a question that persists up to (and in some ways after) the book's ending.
Thoughts on the Ending (Major Spoilers Follow)
I normally try to avoid revealing major plot points of a novel in a review (at least to the extent that doing so would significantly impact the reader's experience of the text). In the case of The Memory Police however, Ogawa's conclusion of this story demands examination in and of itself.
There's a concept that I think is useful to consider in regard to The Memory Police and what it is that this story depicts. In 2007, the English philosopher Miranda Fricker coined the term epistemic injustice to describe (among other things) the manner in which the absence of knowledge can be used as a form of oppression -- what Fricker specifically called hermeneutical injustice, or the injustice of depriving someone of the ability to describe their life and experience. Rather than simply representing a form of censorship, hermeneutical injustice represents the restriction of thought and language itself. In extreme cases, this results in a person's life becoming incomprehensible even to themselves -- let alone to others.
Fricker applied her theories to issues of systemic discrimination against disenfranchised groups, but I think this notion is also useful to apply to Ogawa's novel. This story depicts ultimately the way that the narrator struggles to respond to the expanding vacancies in her own knowledge and language, and her attempts to find a way to confront things that she has been compelled to believe have no place in the world. As this story advances and the narrator's fictional novel weaves itself in and out of the main plot, Ogawa shows how both the protagonist of her main story, and the protagonist of this character's novel struggle to contend with their own versions of the disappearances. In each case, these characters ultimately find that it's their very beings themselves that start to fade away. Everything else that disappeared or was taken from them was merely a preamble to a much more fundamental and disturbing disappearance.
This is demonstrated particularly well in the book's final chapters, which turn away from the simply surreal and instead introduce elements of body horror into the story. Eventually, even human limbs begin vanishing from the island, with the narrator awakening one morning to find that the strange jointed appendage that protrudes from her lower waist (her left leg) appears just as disturbing and useless to her as a massive bloated tumor would. Piece by piece, other limbs vanish soon afterward, and the novel ends with the narrator (seemingly) existing only as a disembodied consciousness -- incapable of interacting with the world in any manner at all, despite remaining undeniably aware of both herself and her surroundings. It's here, finally, after months or possibly even years in hiding, that R ventures back out into the world, leaving the cellar in which he had lived, now safe thanks to the fact that everyone on the island (the Memory Police included) have disappeared.
There is something horrifying about this ending and the way in which it depicts the narrator as continuing to exist despite a total loss of even her body itself. Yet, in its own way this also represents the natural extension of the ambiguity regarding the disappearances which Ogawa has maintained throughout the entire book. Despite her narrator's repeated claims that a vanished object simply ceases to exist, Ogawa regularly demonstrates this statement to be, if not incorrect, at least incomplete. Vanished objects continue to exist on the island long after everyone has been compelled to believe that they do not, and in a similar manner, the narrator continues to exist even after she actively begins telling the reader that she no longer does.
The incongruence of this concept (that of the narrator existing after she has vanished) is mirrored in the book's second to last chapter -- a scene which returns the story's focus to the novel the narrator was writing over the course of the text, and which she had previously abandoned after novels themselves disappeared. In this chapter, the protagonist of the narrator's book encounters another woman who climbs the stairs to the room in which she is being held captive. As the protagonist listens to the sound of someone attempting to open the locked door behind which she is trapped, she considers the very real possibility that she might finally be freed at last. Despite still lacking a voice, all she needs to do is beat her fists against the door to alert the woman on the other side that someone is there. Yet, rather than acting on this knowledge, the narrator's protagonist responds to the presence of the other woman with almost even more fear than she has shown toward her captor, and she states in the text that (essentially) she can no longer imagine leaving the room in which she has now spent so much time:
No! Keep still! How can you explain this to her? Would she believe you? And how would you even tell her? It's not just words you lack. Your eyes and ears, every part of your body has been deformed to fit this room -- that is, to fit his purposes. And even if she did help you, do you really believe you'd get back all the things you've lost? (p.262)
In this way, the story of the narrator's novel concludes with her protagonist abandoning the prospect of regaining her freedom, seemingly viewing even the simple notion of being misunderstood by someone willing to help her as a worse fate than further imprisonment. In addition to the heavy concepts this scene introduces regarding psychology (Ogawa is essentially showing how this character is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome), there's also a dimension added by the fact that, similar to her fictional protagonist, the "real-life" narrator of the main story has at this point in the novel continually told the reader that she has lost the ability to communicate her experiences to others. Specifically, at this point in the book, novels themselves have vanished from the island, and as a result the narrator has continually told both the reader and R that she cannot finish the story she was previously writing. All of this is called into question by this chapter. The narrator completes her novel, just before the book ends, and so even though she has continually said that such an ending does not exist, we as readers are still presented with one.
Because of this, Ogawa's ending to The Memory Police is horrifying, and yet also subtly radical in terms of how it transcends it's own form. Just as how objects on the island are constantly stated to "disappear," and yet continue to exist long after they have done so, both the narrator and the experiences she has had continue existing long after she has vanished. Ogawa, however, does not characterize this element as hopeful. In fact, she treats it with an almost cosmic level of horror when she depicts her narrator continuing to exist despite lacking any body or personal agency. But this ending does still impact how the themes of The Memory Police can be interpreted. To the extent that an entire novel can be distilled into one single thesis statement, perhaps Ogawa's is that people who have been deprived of the ability to communicate still have experiences worth communicating. She ends The Memory Police by showing what one such experience might be.
Conclusion
The Memory Police is a deeply unsettling but also fascinating book -- a novel which takes a compelling premise and concept, and then subjects those ideas to a slow examination that gradually builds to an exploration of the way in which people respond to gaps in their own knowledge and understanding, and the difficulty that filling such gaps entails. Ogawa then strengthens these themes by continually prompting her readers to question the underlying nature of her story and setting, showing how these characters attempt to describe the world around them even as their very understanding retreats from their control. The result is an often mind-bending novel folded into a deceptively simple setting and plot -- a work that defies easy categorization, and which demands the reader's attention long after its narrator has stopped speaking.