The second book I discovered while holidaying in Hong Kong is by Japanese author Yoko Ogawa. I’ve long been a fan of her work—Mina’s Matchbox, Hotel Iris, and The Housekeeper and the Professor. Her latest novel, The Memory Police, transports readers to an unnamed island where objects mysteriously vanish and memories gradually fade. Most of the island’s inhabitants accept this as an inevitable part of life, while a few who still remember live in constant fear of arrest by the Memory Police. It is a truly unique story; I never knew what to expect from beginning to end. Like The Housekeeper and the Professor, memory is a central theme, but The Memory Police takes it further: what if the majority of people progressively lose memory, and this becomes the new normal?
The story is seen through the eyes of a young novelist, who introduces the reader to the island and its peculiar rules. Objects—hats, ribbons, birds, even roses—can disappear without warning. When this happens, the residents must destroy or forget them, or risk a raid by the Memory Police.
One day, the novelist learns that her editor, soon to be a young father, has not forgotten. To protect him from the police, she hides him in the basement of her home, with the help of an elderly family friend. This sets the stage for an unusual bond between the novelist and the editor—both emotional and physical. As he tries to help her remember, more things vanish from the world around them.
Is there hope for the island’s inhabitants to return to “normal”? Could the Memory Police themselves ever disappear? These questions haunted me throughout the book. Like many of Ogawa’s works, The Memory Police leaves some questions unanswered. It is not an entertaining read in the conventional sense—it can be quite somber, as I watched the characters slowly lose their memories.
Yet the book also prompted deeper reflection. It made me think of those suffering from mental illnesses such as dementia, where memory is irretrievably lost over time. At what point, I wondered, does a person cease to be themselves when memory vanishes?