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Shortly after the filming of their amateur movie wraps up and a group of rotten college students take shelter from a sweltering heat of an August day in the only room with an AC unit at a decrepit student dormitory, a disaster occurs! A bottle of coke spills on the AC remote, rendering it broken and unrepairable. With no technician able to fix the remote and no other way to operate the AC, are they going to be doomed and forced to sweat it out until the end of the summer?

When a dorky time traveller from the future shows up in the dorm the next day, with a time machine capable of travelling 99 years to the past or the future, a brilliant idea to go back and save the remote pops up and the plan is unanimously agreed on by everyone, before any of them have time to think about the time paradoxes and their consequences. What follows is a great and comedic scramble to save the time continuum, often only resulting in making things worse. Will the students succeed? And will the main protagonist finally get himself to ask his crush out on a festival when the universe depends on it?

I’m definitely biased based on the fact of my humble self being a great fanboy of Tomihiko Morimi and his works. Still, with the bias all accounted for, I have nothing but praise for Tatami Time Machine Blues. It’s always difficult to write sequels to highly-appraised works, which Tatami Galaxy for sure is, but Tomohiko Morimi managed this job masterfully, if not exceeded in his penmanship. Despite being a story with time machine as it’s central point, this aspect is not too overdone, with characters, their relations and comedic endeavours taking a central stage. Absurdity of the events that unfold, pitiful situation of the protagonist, the perceived devilry of Osu and the traits of others are still carried over from Tatami Galaxy and only developed further, which I think works wonderfully. In short, it’s a Tomohiko Morimi formula for a book bundled with his old characters and sold in a totally new package, what not to love about it?

A fun fact about the book is that it’s actually based on a theatre play by Makoto Ueda! Looking back at the book it should’ve been apparent to me, based on how the timeline only spans two days and the plot can easily be split into separate scenes. Characters of the present and the past also never interact with one another, which of course could not be done in a theatre. If I had friends, especially ones interested in such a project, I would love to meet up and to try acting out Tatami Time Machines Blues, I think that’d be a cool project.

Well, I think I wrote enough. There’s nothing so worthless to speak of as a love mature. Please go ahead and experience the story yourself, dear reader.

The concept of the book fascinated me the moment I read about it for the first time. People living in fear of an authoritarian regime as memories are being forcibly taken away from them? There was certainly a great potential, but sadly, I feel that even though the prose and the general vibe of the novel itself does not disappoint as it kept me hooked all the way to the end, the story, the characters and the many tropes that appeared and then had been left abandoned keep the book down at its core.

I made an entire list of issues I have with the novel, but I want to start things off with some well-deserved praise. “The Memory Police” is written beautifully. I’ll forever remember the scene of the disappearance of the roses. The river coloured red, white and pink as millions of petals had flown down into the sea. How the protagonist felt about it, how she looked at the bare stems of the rose bushes and tried to fill the gap that this disappearance have left. There are many moments like that throughout the book – beautiful and nostalgic. Another trope that I found quite clever is that the protagonist is a writer. While such a thing is often considered cliché, here is serves an important and valid purpose. Because writers are people that make up stories, fill the pages with words that are, in a way, a twisted reflection of the real world, they are also the most effected by things disappearing. There is another novel present within “The Memory Police”, one written by the protagonist that ties very well with the plot of the book and it’s just so satisfying of how the main plot and the plot of that fictional novel converge together at the end.

Now I can finally mention the aspects of the novel that grind my gears and ultimately make it fall short.

The trio of the protagonist, the old man and R works fine in my opinion, and there certainly some moving and memorable lines spoken between them, but it’s quite frustrating just how static they are. It’s blatantly obvious that they exist in the novel only as means to tell the story, not as beings that evolve, develop and feel real.

Next, it is impossible not to draw parallels between “The Memory Police” and “1984” with their dystopian theme. However, in my opinion “The Memory Police” pales in that comparison. Despite being much shorter, “1984” manages to explore the world in detail, flesh out the characters and tell a horrifying, yet compelling story. “The Memory Police” doesn’t really do any of that. We don’t ever get even a remote explanation or a theory of what the motives of the titular organization may be. Why are they making all of these disappearances? Is it because they simply want control? Is there some ideology attached to it? What do they gain from it? Yoko Ogawa never elaborates on that. What’s particularly frustrating in the context is that, for example, at the beginning of the book we get to hear about that secret program of The Memory Police where they put effort into decoding human genome in a way that would allow them to target people who are immune to the disappearances. The protagonist’s neighbour is a researcher working on that program. This could be a good hook worth pursuing, I thought. Eventually though, the man himself is targeted by the authorities, disappears, and we never ever hear about this plot point again. It’s really a minor thing, but there are plenty of such instances, only piling up as the plot continues, so when the book ultimately ended without tying any of them I was left rather disappointed. That is not to say I don’t enjoy any mystery in novels, on the contrary, but “The Memory Police” simply doesn’t provide any base upon which the reader can build a solution, no pieces to assemble the puzzle, so all that remains is confusion.

I was so lucky to have unintentionally read “Tower of the Sun” just before Christmas season, as its story follows the misadventures of a twentysomething year old student in Kyoto just before this famous holiday. However, unlike the jolly, merry atmosphere that families and lovers indulge themselves in during that time, the mood of the protagonist and his male compatriots couldn’t be further from it. They are rather lonely, live in a constant state of gloominess, self-loathing, all while having a superiority complex on their own, declaring war against the tackiness of love and the so-called “Christmas fascism”, all while craving, from the bottom of their hearts, simple happiness.

The protagonist spends his days in a small room, only occasionally interrupted by trips to a grocery store, various book stores, video shop (to tame his inner beast) and most importantly, to stalk his ex (he vigorously fights back against the label of the stalker though and calls it “a research project”). He hasn’t set foot at any lecture halls at his university campus in months. The only productive thing he’s involved in is the occasional shift at a local sushi restaurant. In the eyes of society he’s certainly considered a failure, but in his own eyes, his genius, greatness and the mind of the visionary terrify an average person.

The brilliance of the novel comes from the fact that despite the obvious shortcomings of the protagonist and his way of thinking, he really is a good guy, and anyone who has ever been heartbroken or struggled during the early adulthood can find a reflection of themselves in the man. Personally, I am still going through something uncannily similar and I could portray myself in the many wayward thoughts of his, all while having no hope for the state of the matters to improve. “Tower of the Sun” resonates with me at a deep level, it makes me feel understood. Despite all doom and gloom, however, there might be hope in life, both for the protagonist and the reader.

Leaving the story aside, I could not conclude this review without mentioning the absolutely incredible style of Tomihiko Morimi’s writing and the way it’s been translated into English. Oh how many times have I laughed from the bottom of my heart at the passages that often, despite their mundaneness or absurdness, were written in such a humorous and euphemistic manner. How often I felt transported onto the streets of Kyoto and Osaka, with their detailed and vibrant descriptions. Sprinkle a thin layer of magic and mystery on top and you get a perfect literary mixture. I don’t think there is any other author who comes close.

Wholeheartedly recommended.