48 pages • 1 hour read
Yoko OgawaThe Memory Police
Yoko OgawaFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The unnamed first-person protagonist recalls her childhood questions about the mysterious disappearances on the unnamed island where she lives. This memory takes place in the riverside basement studio where her “Mama” works.
Her mother, a sculptor, can remember the objects—like emeralds, bells, and stamps—that have disappeared and keeps a collection of them in a cabinet with small drawers. She shares stories about the forgotten objects, such as a bottle of perfume, explaining that girls wore perfume when they were meeting boys and how she chose this particular perfume when she and the protagonist’s father where courting.
The protagonist’s mother also explains how disappearances work: Objects are burned, buried, or tossed into the river, and “no one can even recall what it was that disappeared” (4). When asked how she can remember, Mama guesses it’s because the things that have disappeared are always on her mind, but later in the story, her memory is revealed to be the result of some sort of genetic difference.
Chapter 2 Summary
In the present, the protagonist lives in her family home after both her parents and childhood nurse have died. She reminisces about her father’s work as an ornithologist—a job that has become obsolete since the birds disappeared—and visiting him at the bird observatory on the southern hill as a “little girl.” Maps are long-gone, so geography of the island is unclear.
The narrator reflects on the disappearance of the birds. In her recollection, they still exist after being released by pet owners but are “unable to elicit any feeling” (11). All her associations between birds and her father are severed.
After the birds disappear, the Memory Police search the narrator’s home, removing all papers and photographs in her father’s office related to birds and destroying them. The officers are only distinguishable from one another by various badges—all are nameless in this first appearance, and they remain so throughout the novel. She explains that the “first duty of the Memory Police was to enforce the disappearances” (14).
Chapter 3 Summary
The focus shifts to the present. The protagonist is a novelist and writes in what used to be her father’s office. She describes her published novels about losses of people, bodies, and health. This isn’t a glamorous career because “few people here have any need for novels” (15).
The narrator details her daily routine of writing with pencil and paper in the late afternoons and evenings. Her quotidian walk includes visiting her dead nurse’s living husband, who is referred to as “old man” throughout Ogawa’s book. He used to be a ferry mechanic until ferries disappeared; he is now retired and lives on his boat. They have tea and a snack (peach slices with mint garnish) and retell each other memories in an attempt to preserve them. The protagonist reflects on how the old man treasures her books but never reads them, placing them “in the little altar to the sea gods” (17).
On her way home, she visits the ruined observatory where her father used to work and notes the people hurrying home because they are more anxious about the Memory Police after dark.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The unnamed, map-less island immediately introduces ideas surrounding dystopia and utopia. Etymologically, utopia comes from “no place,” and Ogawa’s island is a no-place: a place that doesn’t exist, a fiction that might once have been part of the mapped world but has been exiled as part of the quest for an ideal world. Since this ideal is conceived of and controlled by the rulers, the Memory Police, and forced upon citizens, it is no longer a utopia in the sense of “good place,” but a dystopia, or a nightmare imagining of the future.
The nameless characters reflect the nameless place—the narrator remains “I” and reveals herself to be a woman, but the fact that no one names her foreshadows her disappearance. Her mother, father, nurse, and nurse’s husband (the “old man”) are also unnamed, hinting that they all are or will become victims of the Memory Police. This is juxtaposed with the interchangeable officers; while always gendered as male, the Memory Police are unnamed, representing the power of a police state over individuals.
Future technology—the ability to cause the disappearances throughout the island—is a mechanism through which to interrogate the nature of memories and memory-making. These first few chapters introduce how things disappear in a way a child can understand; the narrator serves as a reader-surrogate in the first flashback, learning about the disappearing world alongside the audience.
Memory is explored alongside the craft of writing. The narrator’s latest manuscript will appear in later chapters, and in Chapter 3, the protagonist discusses her process: She writes “slowly, filling each square on the paper, one character at a time” (16). While society, specifically the police state, does not value writing or reading, art is considered a “sacrament.” Both the narrator and her mother create art that will end up holding secrets.
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