A Tale For The Time Being

Ruth is a Japanese-American novelist who lives on a small island in British Columbia. She discovers Nao’s diary along with several other artifacts in a Hello Kitty lunchbox wrapped in a freezer bag on a beach. Although the sections following Ruth’s life are written in the third-person, the character is based on the book’s novelist, Ruth Ozeki. Ozeki is also a writer who is the child of a Japanese mother and American father. In real life, Ozeki spends half of her time living on a small island in British Columbia with her husband, the German-Canadian artist Oliver Kellhammer.

When the novel opens, Ruth hasn’t written a novel in a long time and has spent the last few years working on a memoir about her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s. Ruth doesn’t feel as if she is getting anywhere with the memoir and is feeling insecure about her abilities as a writer. When she starts reading Nao’s diary, she becomes completely immersed in Nao’s story, to the point that she forgets that the diary was written ten years prior. The experience of reading Nao’s diary becomes as immersive as the experience of writing her own novels. The uncanny dreams and strange coincidences that occur while she is researching the Yasutani family and reading the diary start to make Ruth believe that she is going crazy. She questions whether she is losing the ability to tell fiction from reality. Although these strange events are partially explained by the end of the novel, Ruth finally resolves to accept her inability to fully understand everything and opens her mind to the possibility of multiple worlds. She chooses to believe that she may have been able to briefly cross over into Nao’s world through a dream and help save Nao and her dad from tragic fates. The novel ends with an epilogue written by Ruth, asking Nao to find her if she ever decides she wants to be found.

Jiko is Nao’s great-grandmother and the mother of three children: Haruki #1, Sugako, and Ema (Nao’s dad’s mother). At the beginning of her diary, Nao announces that her diary will tell the story of her remarkable great-grandmother, “the famous anarchist-feminist-novelist-turned-Buddhist-nun of the Taisho era” (19). Although she is now a 104 years old, Jiko is still very active. Even as a nun in a remote temple, Jiko stays in touch with Nao over text and email. Before World War II, Jiko was an anarchist and a feminist who wrote autobiographical fiction and had affairs and friendships with some of the most prominent avant-garde writers and feminists of her era. She named her daughters for two important women activists and passes on her love of activism, literature, and philosophy to her children. When her son is forced to join the Japanese Army, Jiko is so heartbroken that she wants to kill herself. However, she resists because still has a young daughter to care for. She becomes a Buddhist nun after Ema grows up.

Jiko has an extremely important influence on the lives of her grandson and great-granddaughter. While Nao goes to stay with Jiko at her temple, Jiko teaches her about many key principles of Zen Buddhism, such as its commitment to non-violence. She also teaches Nao how to practice zazen, Zen Buddhist meditation, which helps Nao manage the emotions resulting from the extreme bullying she experiences at school. Jiko also tells Nao about her own remarkable life and experiences as well as about her son Haruki, in whose life Nao becomes particularly interested. Nao’s dad was also very close to Jiko growing up and associates her temple with some of his happiest memories. On her death bed, Jiko participates in the Zen master tradition of writing a poem before she dies. She writes the single Japanese character “to live,” a message to encourage her grandson and great-granddaughter to avoid committing suicide and instead find comfort in each other. Although Nao’s diary ends up being more the story of her own life rather than Jiko’s, she promises to continue her diary in a second book where she will actually focus on the story of Jiko’s life.

Haruki #1 was Jiko’s only son and Nao’s great-uncle who died as a kamikaze pilot in World War II. Before being forced to join the army, Haruki was studying philosophy and French poetry at Tokyo University. While he is in the army, Haruki writes letters home to his mother in which he disguises his true feelings about the war effort and the harsh treatment that he receives at the hands of his squadron leader, as the letters are heavily censored by the authorities. However, Haruki also secretly records his true feelings in a diary addressed to his mother, which he writes in French so that the Japanese officers will not be able to read it. In this diary, he reveals that he has decided to fly his plane into the ocean instead of an enemy battleship to avoid supporting the war and the greed and fascism that has fueled it. Ruth finds Haruki’s letters and secret French diary along with his watch in the lunchbox that washes up on their shores. When staying with Jiko at her temple, Nao encounters her great-uncle’s ghost, which makes her become even more interested in his life. Since Nao does not seem to know about the secret French diary, Ruth dreams about bringing the French diary to Jiko’s temple and placing it in the box that was supposed to contain Haruki’s remains. Later, Nao reveals that she and her dad found it there after Jiko’s funeral.

Haruki #2 is Nao’s dad and Haruki #1’s namesake. In the 1990s, Haruki was recruited from Japan to work as a computer programmer for a software company in Sunnydale, California. When his company began making interfaces that could be used to make automatic weapons, Haruki began to worry about the possible repercussions of his work and started researching ways to embed a conscience into certain software so that his work would not be used to violent ends. He is fired for his refusal to give up his research into building more ethical technology. Soon after, his family loses all their savings in the stock market crash and moves back to Japan. Back in Tokyo, Haruki becomes severely suicidal and tries to kill himself several times. His second attempt happens after he finds out about the video that Nao’s classmates have posted of her being attacked and sexually assaulted. He overdoes on sleeping pills after he fails to win the auction to keep Nao’s underwear from going to a pervert. He later joins an online suicide club.

According to Ruth’s dream, Haruki #2 is preparing to meet the people with whom he is going to kill himself when he suddenly encounters Ruth in a park. She tells him that his daughter doesn’t want him to kill himself and that Nao is planning to commit suicide as well. She tells him that Nao has gone alone to the temple where Jiko is dying and encourages him to go find her. Nao reveals that her dad does go to find her when she is waiting for the bus to Jiko’s temple. After Jiko’s death, Haruki #2 tells Nao that they have to live, just like Jiko wanted. They become closer by reading Haruki#1’s French diary together. Nao tells her dad about the bullying she has experienced, and he tells her the truth about why he was fired from his job in Sunnydale. Learning about Nao’s experiences at school inspires Haruki #2 to re-devote himself to programming and develop software that can erase all evidence of a person’s existence across time and space. This software allows Nao to make a new start without the videos from her past in Montreal and leads to Haruki #2 starting his own company in Tokyo that develops technology he believes in.

When the Yasutani family moves back to Tokyo, Nao’s mom struggles to accept the reality that her husband has lost their job and all their savings from their time in the United States. When they first return to Japan, she goes to the aquarium every day to watch the jellyfish swimming in their tank because she heard that this can have a calming effect on the mind. Nao says that she later realizes that her mom was having a nervous breakdown. When Nao’s dad tries to commit suicide and admits that he has not found a new job, Nao’s mom goes to work at as an administrative assistant at a textbook publishing house, something that is very unusual in Japan for a married woman of her age. She is later promoted to an editor. 

Oliver is Ruth’s husband and a Canadian environmental artist of German descent. They met in the 1990s at an artists’ retreat that he was leading in the Canadian Rockies and bonded over their mutual love of Japanese cinema. After a few months of corresponding over email and then living together in New York, Ruth moved with her elderly mother suffering with Alzheimer’s to the small island off the coast of British Columbia where Oliver teaches. Oliver has a deep interest in environmental issues and scientific topics, such as plate tectonics and quantum mechanics. Although he calls his beloved cat “Pest” or “Pesto,” the animal’s real name is Schrödinger. Because he is an artist and doesn’t have a full-time job or publish very frequently, Oliver is somewhat insecure about being with Ruth and worries that she thinks he is a loser.

Babette, whose birth name is Kaori, works as a waitress in a French maid café, where the waitresses roleplay as maids and treat their customers as masters. Before she began working at Fifi’s Lovely Apron, Babette worked as a bar hostess. Babette is secretly running a dating operation of the maid café; the maids that work there also work as escorts and are paid to go on dates with wealthy businessmen. Babette recruits Nao to work as an escort to cater toward men looking to go on dates with young girls. Although Nao initially sees Babette as a friend and believes she has her interests at heart, it seems becomes clear that Babette is only exploiting and mistreating Nao by forcing her to participate in her escort business. 

Ugawa Sensei (“sensei” means teacher) is the substitute teacher for Nao’s class who joins the students in bullying Nao to win points with the popular kids. When the kids start to shun Nao at school, Ugawa Sensei makes a show of marking her absent every day. He also chants a Buddhist hymn at her “funeral.” Nao describes him as having “bad teeth and thinning hair” and “really nasty BO” (78).Nao explains that because Ugawa Sensei was not only a substitute teacher but also a complete loser, helping to bully her is the only possible way that he could ever have hope of getting approval from the students.

Reiko is a popular girl at Nao’s school in Tokyo. Although she does not physically harm Nao herself, she often serves as the ringleader by encouraging other kids to hurt Nao. Later, Reiko leads the rape attempt in which the students attack Nao in the bathroom and make a video as she lies tied up and naked on the floor. 

Daisuke is a geeky and unpopular student in Nao’s class. Nao resents him because she knows he is relieved that the students are bullying her instead of picking on him. One day after school, Nao corners him in the street and forces him to tell her about the plans for her fake funeral. She thinks about hurting him with a knife but ends up letting him go. Later, the kids try to force Daisuke to rape Nao when they all gang up on her in the bathroom. 

Kayla is Nao’s popular best friend from Sunnydale, California. After Nao moves back to Tokyo, she stays in touch with Kayla over email, but after a couple months, Kayla stops responding to her messages. Nao feels as if the popular Kayla can sense how uncool she has become in Japan.

Muriel is a retired anthropologist and a friend and neighbor of Ruth and Oliver. Since one of her major hobbies is scouting the beaches on the island where they live for washed up treasure, she is particularly interested in Ruth’s discovery of the diary and other items in the lunchbox.

Callie is a marine biologist who lives on the small island in British Columbia as Ruth and Oliver. Ruth asks Callie to examine the barnacles on the freezer bag that contained the lunchbox Nao’s diary, to which Callie concludes that the items are not debris from the tsunami.

Dora is the Whaletown postmistress on the island where Ruth lives. She is known for being a gossip and always knowing everyone’s business, in part because she reads everyone’s mail. 

Benoit is a francophone man originally from Quebec who lives on the same island as Ruth. At Muriel’s recommendation, Ruth contacts him and gets him to translate Haruki #1’s secret French diary. He was also friendly with Ruth’s elderly mother before she died.