Beautiful and haunting, meditation on ability, parenthood and intergenerational relationships. Every other page has a turn of phrase that is liable to wow. Lightness and heaviness mix freely in a brief novel that doesn't overstay its welcome. ( )

Una novela fulgurante y llena de esperanza, ambientada en un Japón postapocalíptico tras una catástrofe ecológica.

En el futuro inconcreto en el que está situada esta historia, Japón ya no existe de puertas afuera: una catástrofe de la que nada sabemos ha causado un colapso medioambiental que le ha obligado a cerrar sus fronteras al resto del mundo. El país entero está contaminado, la gran mayoría de las especies animales se han extinguido y la comida se ha convertido en un bien escaso. Las ciudades se han despoblado debido al riesgo de la polución y mucha gente se ha ido a vivir a las periferias, en lugares remotos y aislados. La vida ha ido mutando (aunque el Gobierno ya ha sustituido el término «mutación» por el de «adaptación al medio ambiente»): los hombres tienen la menopausia, todo el mundo cambia de género al menos una vez en la vida, la tecnología ha perdido su foco, el lenguaje ha degenerado y las palabras caen cada vez más rápido en desuso. Los niños que nacen lo hacen débiles y enfermizos, y son los abuelos, que por lo general superan con creces los cien años pero aún conservan un gran vigor, quienes tienen que ocuparse de ellos. Así, la novela resigue un día de la vida del joven Mumei, un adolescente encantador y lleno de esperanza que, en medio del sinsentido que lo rodea, aún ve el mundo con los ojos de quien lo mira por primera vez, y de su bisabuelo Yoshiro, un anciano que vive con la eterna incerteza de lo que el futuro le depara a su bisnieto.

El emisario es una novela fulgurante, construida a partir de una prosa etérea y envolvente, llena de una extraña belleza que conjuga las contradicciones que la vida ofrece a sus protagonistas; una belleza teñida de nostalgia, pero también de la punzante esperanza de los que creen que no está todo perdido, todavía.

This was such a strange little book and that ending wow ( )

An instant classic, in my opinion. The Last Children of Tokyo is a Kafkaesque take on cli-fi, written with a tremendous sense of humor, although the overall mood is resigned. In the Japan of the future, environmental waste has drastically shortened the life expectations of the younger generations, whereas the elderly seem to be neigh immortal. Tawada weaves her strange plot around two characters, a great-grandfather and his great-grandson, and she takes the reader along a cast of absurd side characters, from a baker that gave up painting when others mistook his works for European landscapes, to a service called Rent-a-Dog where one can rent pure-bred dogs for a day. Every beginning of a story is smothered in the core, so that the temporality of this novel is one of waiting for something that will never come, while the world slowly crumbles. Despite all its absurdity and gloom, it is touching too and it prepares us for passing on a world that will be a little less whole for every generation.

Once you’ve opened the cover and started reading The Emissary, you quickly learn that there’s been a disaster in Japan—possibly nuclear, as fallout is hinted at. Japan has pulled back and quarantined itself from the world. [I’m posting this in mid-2021 and quarantines are far too familiar.] And then words start to disappear from the language. Also, all wild animals have vanished, other than crows and spiders. Oh, and men are now going through menopause. The elderly have become the healthiest part of the population, and children are very weak and fading more every day. Politicians are now committing suicide in ever increasing numbers. Tawada’s imagination has been given a kickstart and is spinning rapidly.

Our characters are Yoshiro, who is the great grandfather to Mumei. When Mumei’s teeth fall out, in a very sweet moment, the great grandson lightheartedly tells his great grandfather, “Don’t worry, Great-grandpa, sparrows get along fine without teeth.” It becomes evident that Mumei has become even kinder and more tolerant as the weaknesses of his body become more and more evident.

The book is a very bleak portrait of today’s Japan, a country that has seen more than its share of troubles in recent years. Passively, the population has become more aged, as that percentage of the people is rapidly increasing and graying. More actively, linked disasters have assaulted the country in the form of the 2011 tsunami and the subsequent radiation leakage at the heavily damaged nuclear power plant at Fukushima. A review of the book said, “With the ghosts of Fukushima never far from the novel’s margins, the Japan of The Emissary is hallucinatory, contaminated, and distinctly foreign in a familiar way.”

Away from the subject of the book, but reflecting on Tawada’s style, there’s this. I found a story about a bizarre public reading she gave in which she was reading one of her poems, one that she had written on a white glove. When she finished all the words there, she simply turned the glove inside out and continued reading. This appeals to me probably far more than it should, but it does.

The simple words of this slim book are fascinating. I was previously completely unaware of the surreal strangeness of her writing. That writing shows such great promise and creativity, but in this novel, it seems that it just may have been edited and polished too much, to the point where it had more shine than substance. A New York Times review summed it up. “From a writer with Tawada’s gifts, mere beauty can be a disappointment.” Her active mind was so curious and stylish, that I’m sure to give another of her books a try in the future. ( )