In „The Memory Police" (2019) Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa urges us to remember what has officially been forgotten and, once we have lost the ability to remember, to protect the ones that carry their memory. „It's a shame that the people who live here haven't been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that's just the way it is on this island. Things go on disappearing, one by one. It won't be long now (…) You'll see for yourself. Something will disappear from your life" in such words readers are introduced to the agenda of „the island": an isolated place controlled by the Memory Police. We navigate the island through the memories and observations made by an unnamed narrator, a female writer who lives alone. Like so many other islanders, she loses the memory and meaning of disappeared objects. Her late mother, however, who „remembered all the things" has instilled in her the concept of missing objects: „transparent things, fragrant things… fluttery ones, bright ones…wonderful things". However, people with the ability to retain these kind of forbidden memories are in danger, and they keep disappearing just like the objects.
In my paper, I want to focus on the disappeared objects of everyday life, as well as reactions and words used to describe the loss. Ribbons, bells, emeralds, stamps are harmless. Yet, personal memories have accumulated around them, a process resulting in the owner's emotional empowerment, these objects are targeted by the surveillance state. The transmission of memories from mother to daughter can be read through a postmemory lense (M. Hirsch). On the other hand, the disappeared flowers and birds act as an invisible, silent warning of the sixth extinction which we push the Earth further into. This may result in „living alone in a world of wounds" and experiencing „ecological grief" (A. Leopold, A.Cunsolo).
Last but not least, my reading of Ogawa's book is through both the thing theory (B. Brown) and dystopia theory, with its long tradition drawn on the relationships between banned/lost memory and literature. That is why I also want to raise the question of the role of the writer under such circumstances. „We must remember to write and write to remember," Ogawa urges, underlining the possible risk of words themselves disappearing one day.
