In July 2022 I gave a seminar on the theme “ignorance as a political strategy”—topical enough. Among the things we read was Yōko Tawada’s novel The Emissary, because it is short and accessible and because I had not liked it when I’d read it previously and wanted to see how others found it. The Emissary (2014; English translation 2018) describes life in a near-future Tokyo where the young are feeble while older people, those seventy and above, say, are no longer subject to bodily decline—some seem to grow more vital as they age. There has been some kind of environmental catastrophe, the nature of which has not been made clear to the people of Japan. The government seems to know more than it is letting on: those who vocally question official policy find themselves menaced. But then, it is not clear that the government is still the government—administrative functions appear to have been privatized. Japan has reverted to a state of sakoku, closure to the outside world—the protagonist, Yoshirō, laments the loss of the plush foreign towels, now banned, that he used to use—but withdrawal, apparently, is the condition everywhere, whence the need for emissaries, chosen from among the young.
I chose the book, as I said, for how it thematizes the cultivation of ignorance as a political strategy, be it one of control (keeping the populace in the dark) or resistance (separating one’s life from the public drama). But in the discussion, what drew our attention was how Tawada evokes her characters’ inability to imagine a future. Yoshirō, observed one of the participants, may be immortal. His great grandson and ward Mumei (“No name”) shows promise as an emissary but could die before he gets to go overseas. Neither of them seems able to form a picture of the world as it will be more than ten years out. In this respect, their situation resembles our own.