3.5 rounded up to 4
"Our memories have been battered by the disappearances, and even now when it's almost too late, we still don't realize the importance of the things that have been lost." (231)
'The Memory Police' has been compared to some pretty big hitters: 'Fahrenheit 451', '1984.' And while those comparisons are apt even just from the synopsis on the back, they also might set a person up to think they're going to get something they're not.

This is a dystopian, yes, and it is about authoritarianism, yes, but it's less about the systems themselves and more about the effect those systems have on ordinary people. And specifically, it's about the effect those systems have on group and personal identity. About what's left when collective memory is stripped away.

We follow an unnamed protagonist who works as a novelist on an island where one by one things are disappearing from everyone's memories. One day you know what a bird is, can recognize one when you see it, and the next day --boom-- you can see a bird and have no idea what it is or retain any memory of what it might have meant to you.

It's never explained how this process occurs, but what we do know is that it doesn't work on everyone. Some of the islanders don't forget. This is where the Memory Police come in. We never learn much about them other than that they check in to make sure everyone gets rid of all reminders of whatever has most recently disappeared, and also to take away anyone who doesn't lose their memory.

The result of this is that some islanders attempt to hide friends and neighbors who don't lost their memories from the Memory Police in a manner very evocative of the Nazi regime. And like the Nazi regime, as time goes on, the Memory Police continue to crack down on the townsfolk. Famine and a never-ending winter follow.

But this isn't an allegory for Nazi Germany, at least, not exclusively. By being so vague, Ogawa evokes the horror of any type of cultural genocide.

As an American now living in Canada, it brought up most strongly in me the comparison to the systematic cultural genocide of the Indigenous peoples of North America and Hawaii as well as of the slaves brought over from Africa. The comparison being that while the people themselves are still here, they've been largely stripped of their linguistic and cultural heritage through systems like the residential schools and prohibitions on speaking native languages or practicing native religions.

In the world of 'The Memory Police' part of the tragedy is the interactions between those who don't forget and those that do.

"I imagine you'd be uncomfortable, with your heart full of so many forgotten things." "No, that's not really a problem. [...] Memories don't just pile up -- they change over time. And sometimes they fade of their own accord. Though the process, for me, is quite different from what happens to the rest of you when something disappears from the island. [...] My memories don't feel as though they've been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls." (p.82)

This is the perspective of 'R', the only member of our cast of characters who doesn't forget the things that have been disappeared. In his hiding place from the Memory Police, he keeps small reminders of things the other islanders can't remember: books, a harmonica, sour candies, a ferry ticket.

He gives another main character a music box -- something that was disappeared long ago-- and tells him to listen to it every day in the hopes of bringing back the memories of it. But it's to no avail. No matter how hard he tries to help the protagonist and their mutual friend remember the things they've lost, the objects only distress them. They understand that the objects are meaningful, but they've been stripped of the knowledge of why that might be. The objects are curiosities, but they hold no meaning.

Much in the same way that elders of a marginalized group might cling to their language and small cultural mementos, they can only insist to younger generations that these things are important; they cannot make them feel the significance. Because of colonialism or marginalization, that line of collective memory has been severed forever.

'I looked over at R. "So you really think our hearts are decaying?" "I don't know whether that's the right word, but I do know that you're changing, and not in a way that can be easily reversed or undone. It seems to be leading to an end that frightens me a great deal." (147)

That is the ultimate assertion of 'The Memory Police': when something is truly lost, one can never get it back.

Our protagonists try to carry on as best they can despite feeling increasingly full of holes with each disappearance. Our protagonist raises this fear to her friend:

"If it goes on like this and we can't compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it's completely hollowed out, we'll all disappear without a trace." (p.53)

In the end, she's proven right; there's no more need for the Memory Police because the islanders have nothing left to disappear, and retain only their voices, and even those drift away on the breeze in a conclusion that ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

It's a very bleak message if it is indeed analogous to the effects of colonialism.

Ogawa largely has a fairly delicate touch to her writing, which did make the clunkier moments stand out. In a very on the nose moment after novels have been disappeared and the townsfolk go out en masse to burn them, the protagonist quote Heine's famous line: "Dort, wo man Buecher verbrennt, verbrennt man am End auch Menschen." (Where books are burned, people will also be burned in the end.)

And this never really goes anywhere because the focus isn't on the fates of those who keep their memories, but on those who don't. We get the imagery of people being taken away by a government agency, and we can infer that they don't come back alive, but this context is presented as more of a set piece than a fully integrated part of the story and is the weakest aspect. Ironic, considering that the Memory Police take the title.

Nevertheless, despite this pretty large blemish, there's a lot of good to be contemplated in 'The Memory Police.' It's beautifully written, the story within the story is haunting, and the questions about memory and identity are thought provoking and certainly relevant.

Yoko Ogawa is clearly a skilled writer with a fresh and intriguing point of view, and while 'The Memory Police' may not have been my favorite thing I've ever read, it was a good appetizer to get me started, and I'd read more by her in the future.

In a broader context, Ogawa exists in conversation with a crop of other contemporary female writers that hasn't been left unnoticed. Works by fellow Booker Prize short-lister Mieko Kawakami ('Heaven'), and Best Translated Book Award nominee Sayaka Murata ('Convenience Store Woman') have begun rising to the top of discussions of translated works on platforms such as Youtube and TikTok.

Booktuber 'Books and Bao' noted in their video essay on Yoko Ogawa's body of work:

"What makes a lot of the books by contemporary Japanese women so unique and beloved [...]is their ability to pull open the human chest and take a look at its heart. But of course, whatever we see, we project a bit of ourselves onto it, and so they all look at the human heart and they project a bit of themselves onto it. Maybe that's love and adoration, maybe it's cynicism, maybe it's hate, maybe it's anger. [...] And Yoko Ogawa is full of an awful lot." ~

Definitely an author to keep an eye on.