64 pages • 2 hours read
Ruth OzekiA Tale For The Time Being
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Nao”
Nao tells the reader that her father has tried to commit suicide several times in the past. She and her father are currently fighting about the fact that she is refusing to go to school. She did badly on her high school entrance exams, which means she will have to go to trade school. The reason she did badly on her exams is because up until a year or so ago, she attended school in the United States where she was raised. Her parents left Japan when she was a baby to move to Sunnydale, California when her dad got a job as a computer programmer. When her dad’s company went bankrupt after “the Dot-Com Bubble” exploded, he was fired, and the family lost their visas and their savings.
In Tokyo, Nao begins public school in the middle of the school year and is bullied for being foreign and a transfer student. Her dad can’t find a job, so they must live in a poor part of the city in a tiny two-room apartment. The first time her dad tries to kill himself happens after they have been back in Japan for six months. After awhile, her father announces that he has been hired by a start-up that is “developing a line of empathic productivity software” (49). They are thrilled that he has found a job, even though he will not be making even close to what he made in California. One night, however, he is arrested as he is stepping out in front of a train. After he is saved by the policemen, he reveals that he did not actually have a job and has been spending his days in a park feeding the crows and betting on horse racing. Although her mom chooses to believe that her husband’s first suicide attempt was an accident, Nao knows that he intended to kill himself.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Ruth”
Ruth has been reading Nao’s diary aloud to Oliver. After reading the part about Nao’s dad feeding the crows in the park, Oliver observes that Japan has entirely different species of crow than North America. However, the other day he saw a crow that looked more like a Corvus japonensis than the type of crow they have off the coast of Canada. He doesn’t understand how this could be possible.
Ruth thinks back to when she first met Oliver “in the early 1990s at an artists’ colony in the Canadian Rockies, where he was leading a thematic residency called End of the Nation-State” (56). He was an environmental artist who worked on various kinds of public installations. They stayed in touch over email, and eventually Ruth moved to be with him on the secluded, remote island in Western Canada, along with her mother who was already suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Ruth sits in her office trying to work on the memoir about her mother. After years of working on the manuscript, she feels as if she has made a mistake by trying to write nonfiction since she has only ever written novels before. She tries to focus on her work but all she can think about is Nao’s diary. That night, Oliver tells her that he has seen the Japanese species of crow—the Jungle Crow—again.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Nao”
Nao explains that Jiko, her great-grandmother on her dad’s side, had three kids: a son named Haruki and two daughters named Sugako and Ema. Her youngest child, Ema, was Nao’s grandmother. When Ema got married, Jiko adopted her husband, Kenji, as her son to keep the family name alive since her only son died as a kamikaze pilot in World War II. Nao then returns to telling the story of her family’s first year back in Tokyo. After her father tries to kill himself, he becomes a hikikomori, “a person who refuses to leave the house” (70), and her mother gets a job as an administrative assistant at a publishing house. One night, their bathtub breaks. Since the landlord refuses to fix it, the family starts going to the public baths (sento). Nao is afraid to go to sento with her mother because she has cuts and bruises from being bullied by the kids at school. Although Nao tries to tell her mother that the marks on her body are from an allergy, her mother realizes that she is being bullied and goes to the school to complain. After her mother’s visit to the school, the kids stop physically hurting her and instead start to shun her. After Nao’s mother brings home a series of books called The Great Minds of Western Philosophy, Nao’s dad starts spending his days reading the books and turning the pages from different volumes into origami insects.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Ruth”
Oliver falls asleep while Ruth reads Nao’s diary aloud. The next morning, Ruth sits down to work on her memoir but gets distracted by trying to find information about the antique watch that came in the lunchbox. She googles the Japanese characters on the watch and discovers that it comes from a line of watches worn by kamikaze pilots during World War II. Afterwards, Ruth researches the kamikaze pilot who was Nao’s great-uncle as well as Nao’s father, both of whom are named Haruki Yasutani. She is unable to find information about either one. She then does a search for “certain death,” “suicide,” “Chuo Rapid Express,” and “Harryki” (a mistyping of Haruki) in the hope of finding information about Nao’s father’s first suicide attempt. To her surprise, she comes across an excerpt from a letter on a website run by a Stanford University professor studying “first-person narratives of suicide and self-killing” (87). Writing under the pseudonym “Harry,” the letter’s author talks about how in his culture suicide has always been seen as something beautiful and honorable and as a way “to make our feeling of alive most real” (87). The author says that the only reason he has not tried to kill himself again is because he is afraid it will be hard for his daughter. Ruth immediately suspects that “Harry” is Nao’s father and writes to the professor asking for more information about the letter-writer.
Later that day, Ruth asks her neighbor Muriel if she knows anyone who reads French to help her decipher the composition book written in French. Muriel suggests she speak with Benoit LeBec, a Quebecois man who is the son of French literature professors. As Muriel is leaving, they spot the Jungle Crow again. After Oliver goes back inside, Ruth asks the crow: “What are you doing here? [...] What do you want?” (96).
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
A Tale for the Time Being explores several issues that have received a great deal of attention in contemporary Japan, such as suicide, bullying in schools, and devastation following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Northern Japan. Early on, Nao reveals that she intends to kill herself after finishing her book and hints that she has been badly bullied in school for being different from her classmates. Both extreme bullying among schoolchildren and high suicide rates have been common topics of concern in Japanese society for the last few decades.
One of the major themes that emerges in A Tale for the Time Being is the concept of suicide. After a few chapters, we learn not only is Nao thinking about killing herself, but also that her father has tried to commit suicide several times. In the email by the man that Ruth assumes to be Nao’s dad on the Stanford professor’s website, “Harry” explains that Japanese men like himself long to commit suicide because Japanese culture has taught them that dying is better than bringing shame on oneself and one’s family. Since he has failed as his family’s provider by losing his job and their savings, Nao’s dad doesn’t feel as if he can live with the dishonor he has brought upon his wife and daughter. Harry writes that today in Japan, suicide is becoming even more popular because of “Economic Recession and downsizing” (88). He mentions the phenomenon of suicide clubs, where people get to together to discuss different methods and choose one to do together. For many people like himself, dying is the most meaningful experience they can imagine having. Nao’s dad also explains that Japan has a long history of connecting suicide and shame. During World War II, soldiers were taught to kill themselves rather than accept defeat, and many young men were compelled to take on kamikaze, or suicide, missions. Nao’s great-uncle and her father’s namesake, Haruki #1, was in fact a kamikaze pilot in World War II.
While Nao’s American upbringing alienates her from her classmates and makes her feel out of place in Tokyo, it unites her with the reader of her diary, Ruth. The daughter of a Japanese mother and an American father, Ruth remains attached to her Japanese heritage and is deeply affected by the images of the devastation after the earthquake and tsunami hit Northern Japan. She is especially affected by Nao’s diary because the teenage girl shares her experience of becoming not entirely American or Japanese. Nao’s diary starts making her think more about her Japanese mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s and the memoir that she has never been able to finish. She feels as if she has only “lost time” by trying to write nonfiction instead of another novel. The novel hints that Nao’s own memoir of sorts may provide Ruth with the inspiration she needs to move forward in her writing.
These chapters also suggest that crows will become an important motif in the novel. Instead of going to work like he tells his wife and daughter, Nao’s dad goes to the park to feed the crows every day before attempting to kill himself for the first time. After Ruth reads this section aloud, Oliver mentions that he has recently spotted a Japanese species of crow flying around their property, a type that he calls the Jungle Crow. Since the Jungle Crow is native to Japan, it becomes a link between the country where Nao is writing and the place where Ruth is currently living.
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