The diary begins by telling us of Nao’s miserable family life in a tiny apartment in Tokyo. Her father can’t find work and her mother finally takes a job to support the family. After her father’s failed suicide, Nao has little faith in him. She misses California, where she lived from age 3 to 14. She can barely speak contemporary Japanese and at school she is first physically bullied and then ostracized with a mock funeral, which is filmed and put on-line. “In my heart, I am American,” she says.
That summer, Nao goes to stay in a mountain monastery northeast of Tokyo with her 104-year-old great grandmother, the nun Jiko. Jiko had been an intellectual and writer and Nao has great respect for the tiny woman. Jiko inquires into Nao’s anger and teaches her to sit zazen. “It can become your superpower,” she says. On the beach below the temple, Jiko encourages Nao to fight with the waves rolling in. She requires Nao to run up and down the steep temple steps every morning.
All summer, Nao works in the temple kitchen, bathes in the hot springs and listens to her great-grandmother’s wisdom. “Up, down, same thing,” she says. “Not same, but not different.” Once when they are on a walk and Nao sees some scary girl bikers, she tries to hurry Jiko past. But Jiko takes her time and bows to them. The girls return the bow.
At the end of the summer the Obon festival, at which the spirits of the dead burst through the membrane separating them from the living, is celebrated at the temple. In the shrine room, in the dark, Nao believes her father has come, but it is actually her great-uncle Haruki. The man is quite young. He sings a French song and then is gone. Nao looks at a photo of Haruki to make sure and a letter slips out from the frame. It is the official letter of farewell he wrote to his mother, Jiko.
Back in school, Nao studies harder, but the bullying hasn’t stopped. After a particularly bad incident, she cuts off all her hair and goes to school in a hooded sweatshirt. In class she stands up on her desk, makes a loud cry and takes off her hood. She bows to her teacher and to her classmates and leaves.
Nao does not go back to school. At a cos-play coffeeshop, she meets Babette, to whom she speaks freely. Babette sets her up on some “dates” and she begins writing in her diary. Nao has very little hope and, like her father, plans to commit suicide after she has written down the story of her great-grandmother’s life.
Jiko’s companion calls to tell Nao that Jiko’s last hours are approaching and she should come quickly. Nao takes the train and waits all night for the bus. In the morning her father joins her. Jiko writes a last character, the one for “life.” “For now and for the time being,” she says and dies. Nao and her father know that Jiko was speaking to them. “We must do our part,” says Nao’s father. “We must live.” They assist with the funeral and go home.
At home, Nao’s father begins a program which searches for every reference of a person’s name on-line and expunges it. He wants to clean up the cyber bullying of his daughter. Nao learns that her father was fired for raising the issue of conscience and wondering if he could build it into the game controllers he was working on, which were being purchased by the U.S. military. She also learns that her great uncle Haruki flew his plane into the ocean rather than aiming at an American ship.
Nao takes her equivalency exams and qualifies for an international school in Montreal, where she studies French. She remains determined to write down Jiko Yasutani’s story.
Nao’s story is confirmed by Ruth’s correspondence with an old friend of Nao’s father in Sunnyvale. In parallel with Nao’s story, we learn much about Ruth’s life on a remote island off British Columbia with her husband Oliver and their friends. Ruth gets so deep into Nao’s story she feels she has participated in it and Oliver tells her about quantum mechanics theories which possibly support this.
Much of Nao’s story is earthy and raunchy, the underside of being an adolescent girl in Japan. It is hard to read, but this part of the book is redeemed by the equally true stories of life in the temple with her “old Jiko.” We have the feeling that Nao is being absolutely honest about what she sees and feels, courageous in and of itself. We do not see her overcome her almost universally bad experiences in Japan, except through one defiant act. Later, we discover that she makes her way to Canada and a better life.
Learning of the anti-war lineage of her family makes Nao very proud. Ruth Ozeki tells her story in A Tale for the Time Being [published 2013], a rich evocation of both Japan and British Columbia. She puts together accurate science, everyday detail and characters with so much reality you feel you know them. Writing this open to actual, difficult life continually takes you by surprise.
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