The Memory Police

by Yoko Ogawa

Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder.

Originally published in 1994, translated in 2019.

Date read: 10 Nov 2025

274 pages

Paperback

Shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize.

Thoughts (spoiler-free, but with loads of personal opinion)

Touted as a masterpiece, I couldn’t quite connect with the novel. A classic case of the book not being right for me? Perhaps.

I found it disturbing. The synopsis and of course the cover were what made me want to read the book. The premise being that – 

Objects are made to disappear from an unknown island in an unknown place. One after the other, no specific times, random intervals, all at the behest of an organization called The Memory Police. One not-so-fine day hats disappear, another day ribbons, and birds, and roses. Things keep getting disappeared and erased from people’s memories over time. But some people don’t forget. The narrator, a novelist, is one of those who forgets. Her editor is one of those who doesn’t. She wants to save her editor from The Memory Police. So far, a perfect set-up for a wonderful dystopian science fiction.

But but but, this is perhaps as interesting as it’s going to get. Nothing more. Words just fill page after page and it became tedious to read after a while. There are a few more characters that tie the book together but their purpose seems only to be to provide convenience to the main characters. There are inconsistencies, overall creating a catch-22 type situation – if something has disappeared, how do they have the words for it unless they are someone who remembers. But the narrator is someone who doesn’t remember which makes the whole situation very loopy.

Things happen, but nothing really happens.

Everything that happens seems to be bad, yet nothing bad seems to happen.

“Horrible things were about to happen, but somehow we felt increasingly calm.”

On many levels, it did not make sense to me. The justifications too.

Perhaps all of this is a metaphor for life as we know it. But, as it stands –

I felt that there was much that could have explored on this topic, but perhaps that is the purpose of another book and not this book; and this what the author chose to write.

P.S.: Touted = praised or advertised as being important, valuable, impressive. Why are such dark books critically acclaimed? What is it about that makes critics like them? Frankly, it is easier to write something dark than to write about light, humorous things.

P.P.S.: This book was as irritating to read as One Hundred Years of Solitude.

A solid system for productivity and mental health (pg. 92 of the book)

Note: quoted here with a bit of paraphrasing. This is probably the one good thing about this book.

The healthiest way of living was to wake in the morning thinking about the things that had to be done during the day; then, at night before going to bed, to check that everything had been accomplished, whether satisfactorily or not. Moreover, the morning agenda needed to be as concrete as possible, and the tasks ideally involving some sort of reward, no matter how small [I don’t necessarily always support the external-reward-as-motivation system, but works in the context of the book]. Finally, the day’s work needed to tire them out in both body and spirit [recipe for good sleep].

Quick vocab booster

• Rend: tear (something) into pieces

• Superfluous: unnecessary; something being more than what is required

• Slipcases: the ‘box’ in ‘box sets’

• Cannery: a factory where food is canned

• Transom: the flat surface forming the stern of a boat

• Arboretum: a botanical garden devoted to trees

You’ll like this book if

• You like science fiction/ dystopian fiction

• You like melancholic novels which bring about a sense of longing (reminds me of another novel: The Night Tiger by Yangtze Choo, more magical realism but invokes a similar sense of melancholy).

• You like the dark

• You like disturbing things and long-winded descriptions

• You are okay with purposeless things that lead nowhere, sometimes even negative progress

If you liked this book, please tell me why you liked it. I would really like to know.

A few lines from the book (had to hunt for these)

There was no doubt that they were creating chaos, but they went about it in such a precise manner that they gave an impression of careful order.

Well, the important thing is that you take care of yourself.

It was always sad when a food disappears.

The words lined up on the page felt quite different from those that were spoken.

“In general, most things you worry about end up being no more than that – just worries.”

“I’m not sure about everything. Memories don’t just pile up – they also change over time. And sometimes they fade of their own accord.”

“So, since our adversary is invisible, we are forced to use intuition. It is extremely delicate work.”

“It was difficult to decide which books to keep and which books to part with.”