The disappearance as a way of living: Reconciliation with the loss and the paradoxes of human memory in the works of Ogawa Yōko and Kawakami Hiromi

Abstract

The article deals with the representation of the problem of memory in contemporary Japanese fiction. Ogawa Yōko’s novel «The Memory Police» and Kawakami Hiromi’s story «To Disappear», chosen for the analysis, demonstrate similar approaches and some parallels in terms of plot structure. In «The Memory Police», there is a young writer in the center of the narration, who lives on an island where things and memories about them disappear, whereas some people are «immune» to forgetting things and are prosecuted. The main character of «To Disappear» lives in a strange world where people go missing, change their shapes, and communicate with the mystical forces. The memories about those who disappeared vanish, and the main character is the only one who keeps the fragments of the past. For these women, the contact with something missing becomes a tool to form so-called «postmemory», recollection of the events they have not witnessed, as well as a device to fight the unfair social system (the Police and the patriarchal community respectively). Disappearance in Ogawa and Kawakami’s works is also connected with the bodies’ deformation and the following loss of self-identity. Finally, the problems of memory and corporeality loss are linked to the women’s question in the works mentioned above. The loss of voice by the main character in «The Memory Police», the history of family disappearance in «To Disappear» – all these plot lines correspond with the main issues represented in contemporary Japanese women fiction. To sum up, these two works represent a new type of world-view and existence, moving away from the usual model of «personal space». Escapism is hyperbolized, disappearance becomes a way of living, and the written narration is the only chance to leave a trace and to connect to memories and one’s own history.