Fans of George Orwell’s classic “1984” will be quick to draw comparisons between the memory police and the draconian thought police: the totalitarian zealots who stalk citizens that fail to conform to the regime of Big Brother. The Japanese novel, which was first published in 1994 and later translated into English in 2019, has found its way amongst the ranks of seminal dystopian novels. As the narrator’s mother recounts, when a disappearance occurs, “you’ll feel that something has changed from the night before, and you’ll know that you’ve lost something”. How and why this happens, is never explained. Yōko Ogawa’s novel “The Memory Police” hinges on this eerie concept that objects, ranging from the mundane such as a ribbon to the meaningful such as birds, begin to dissipate from the residents’ memories, slipping away into a growing void of obscurity.

But while R’s safety appears secured in the confines of his refuge, the protagonist's fading memory means that her grasp on the world around her begins to wither away. Determined to protect R, the small bunker the protagonist constructs under the floorboards of her house becomes both his home and a hiding spot. They too will become nameless things of the past. But for her editor, R, one of the few islanders who manages to remember every lost object, his ability to recall proves dangerous in a society where those who hold on to forgotten artefacts are taken away and removed from the island, much like the disappeared items. The significance of a perfume bottle or emerald is lost on her, though she hides these relics in a special cabinet away from the prying eyes of her neighbours and the omnipresent memory police. Raiding homes and ridding the island of any surviving evidence, the ruthless police force will stop at nothing to ensure that all islanders forget.įor the novel’s protagonist, a writer, who, like the island is never given a name, this sudden disappearance is a common occurrence in her life. This is all orchestrated by the memory police: an oppressive group of officers that remove the last vestiges of “disappeared” objects.

Dispersed amongst the tides, the final traces of the flower are washed away carried out to the sea, never to return again. Staring out from their windows, the petals that flow down the town’s river are nothing more than specks of red, pink and white their scent and texture soon to become a distant recollection. On a brisk winter morning, the residents of a nameless island wake to find that their memories of roses have vanished.

The memory police by yōko ogawa