A Tale For The Time Being

A Tale for the Time Being is a work of literature about the experience of reading and writing. Ruth is a writer who spends most of the novel reading instead of writing. For her, the experience of reading Nao’s story becomes as immersive as if she were in the middle of writing one of her own novels. As Nao writes, she frequently reflects on her writing process and addresses the reader directly, breaking down the wall between the world of the novel and the world of readers. These addresses aim to include the reader and to elevate the reader’s consciousness of the text. The novel encourages the reader to see Nao as addressing Ruth, the reader inside the text, as well as addressing the readers outside the text. By including both a writer and a reader of the diary, Ozeki calls attention to the way in which any literary work requires both a writer and readers to come into existence, or “make magic” (3).

Other characters in the novel are also readers and writers. Before becoming a Buddhist nun, Jiko was a novelist who wrote feminist autobiographical fiction in early 20th-century Japan. She is also an avid reader of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō as well as Western literature and philosophy. Her son, Haruki #1, studied French philosophy before entering the military and inherits his mother’s love of literature and writing. He writes letters in Japanese home to his mother and keeps a secret French diary where he records his true thoughts and feelings during his time in the military. While fighting in a war he does not believe in, Haruki #1 writes to his mother that he finds himself increasingly drawn to “the idea of literature—the heroic effort and nobility of our human desire to make beauty of our minds” (257). He also turns to the Shōbōgenzō for comfort and inspiration during the final days before his death.

A Tale for the Time Being is also an example of metafiction. The fictional character of Ruth shares many similarities with the novel’s author, Ruth Ozeki, who is also Japanese American, married to an environmental artist named Oliver, and lives on an island off the coast of Canada. Ozeki herself has suggested that the novel should be read as a metaphor for the creation of a novel. According to Ozeki, the book is about “the character creating the novelist.” Nao’s diary metaphorically represents the artistic inspiration that Ruth has been searching for as she tries to write the memoir about her mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s. Ruth’s search for information about Nao’s family and the way in which she becomes so consumed in the story and figuring out its ending can be compared to the creative process a novelist goes through when researching and writing a novel. Furthermore, the way in which the ending of the diary keeps changing calls to mind the way in which a fictional work has a multitude of possible endings; only once the author has chosen one ending to set to paper does a character’s fate become set in stone. Moreover, the fact that Ruth ends up forgetting that Nao’s present is different from her own testifies to how powerful and immersive the experience of reading a compelling work of literature can be.

One of the major recurring subjects in A Tale for the Time Being is suicide. Near the beginning of the novel, Nao reveals to the reader that she intends to commit suicide when she finishes writing the story of Jiko’s life. In the same vein, Nao’s dad has tried to kill himself multiple times. He first tries to throw himself in front of a train and later tries to take an overdose of sleeping pills. Following these failed attempts, he joins a suicide club with people whom he met online who also want to kill themselves. In his letter to the professor at Stanford, Haruki #2 explains that many Japanese men like himself are drawn to the idea of suicide because of the way in which Japanese culture has often represented it as an honorable and beautiful way to die. In World War II, for instance, soldiers were taught to kill themselves if they were captured or defeated, and many were forced to carry out kamikaze missions where they would die flying their planes into enemy battleships. Nao’s dad’s namesake, Haruki #1, was himself a kamikaze pilot, although it is later revealed that he did not want to take part in the war and ended up flying his plane into the sea to avoid killing more people and supporting the war. Haruki #2 also explains that the suicide rates are particularly high among men like himself because Japan is experiencing an economic recession and many people are losing jobs. Unable to provide for their families or feel like they are contributing to society, these men turn to suicide as a way to take control over their lives.

By the end of the novel, however, Nao and her dad have turned away from suicide as a solution to their problems. On her deathbed, Jiko writes a final message to her grandson and great-grandson: the Japanese character “to live.” She wants to encourage them to accept the fact of their existence in the present. After Ruth’s intervention and Jiko’s final words, Nao and her dad start to find comfort each other and find a way to live in “the now” by rededicating themselves to their writing and computer programming, respectively.