Time and death. Two inseparable themes in life, and this novel weaves them together like a water-tight basket. This novel explores the idea of death in several different ways, most obviously and notably within Nao’s own narratives.  Though funny and youthful, she connects most of her life events with the inevitability of her own death, or suicide as it would be in her case. Her narrative relies centrally on the fact that she is going to die. Revealed as the purpose of her writing the journal which now resides in the hands of Ruth, the quote above is Nao’s explanation for the journal.

Suicide is particularly emphasized within this novel.  Nao’s father attempts suicide via Chuo Rapid Express, a  famous suicide spot.  Nao’s father’s Uncle, also known within the novel as Haruki #1, was a Kamikaze pilot in World War II.  Nao, who also struggles with her own feelings on suicide, notes “Haruki #1 was a kamikaze pilot, which is kind of weird when you think of it because before he became a suicide bomber he was a student of philosophy at Tokyo University, and my dad, Haruki #2, really likes philosophy and keeps trying to kill himself, so I guess you could say that suicide and philosophy run in the family…” (P.68).

In Nao’s future, a woman named Ruth is reading her journal, trying to understand her life.  It is understood that the history of the novel and this history of our world coincide, so we as readers are aware that a large tsunami and earthquake hit Japan some time after the writing of Nao’s journal.  This, in and of itself, presents the theme of death more ambiguously than the previously mentioned examples.  While Ruth reads Nao’s journal, we as readers feel as though she is alive, at least for the time being. Though when we are presented with Ruth’s narrative, there is an ethereal understanding that Nao and her family may have perished in the wake of the tragedies that Japan suffered.

To me, these were the most important life and death themes, at least to the current place in the novel we are at. If you think I missed anything important, please post in the comments so that I can expand on the ideas.

To Nao the natural world is an escape from the cruelty of her classmates and her sense of isolation. Every morning before school she stops at a temple, “We were right in the middle of Tokyo, but when you got close to the temple, it was like stepping into a pocket of ancient humid air, which had somehow gotten preserved like a bubble in ice, with all the sounds and smells still trapped inside it” (46). There is a sense of calm, of ancientness and connection to ancestors. Nao describes the temple, especially the spot on the bench in front of the stunted maple tree as being “safe”.

Our reading from A Tale For the Time Being inspired me to think about my own connection to the Pacific Northwest:

I have come to crave the tang of salt in the air, the loamy scent of wet soil. Every summer we swim in the bioluminescence, the hoarse barking of bull seals echo menacingly as blue light blooms and swirls around us. The plankton cling to our damp bodies like otherworldly LEDs, looking strikingly similar to pinpricks of starlight. When I was 19, I swore I’d never seen anything more beautiful. I think about how in many ways I have grown up in this place. The woods behind my house a refuge. The sharp scent of cedar tugging at my clothes as wind howls through the canopy. I feel calm here, back pressed up against the roots of Grandma Maple, the oldest tree. Green helicopter seeds spiral in gentle arcs around my head, and in winter it is so quiet. The bare branches look like the sprawled legs of monstrous insects, hanging heavy with moss and lichen. Blackberry twines itself around the spokes of my ribcage, the dark succulent berries are a dizzying rise, a pull.