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Scattered All Over the Earth

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They visit Trier to meet Nanook, and make friends with Akash, an Indian, and Nora, a German. Akash is a transgender person who dresses in red saris. Nora works in a museum and has a keen concern in environmental issues. She is also Nanook’s former girlfriend. Once I corrected this to “it was heartwarming,” the squirmy part no longer made sense, and I would lose so much of what she had originally wanted to convey. To her, the word “heartwarming” was not about a warmth on the heart but the heart squirming like a worm. In Japanese there’s a phrase that can be translated to “the heart quivers,” which might be what she had in mind. Hers was a phrase that existed just between the two of us, a quirky inside joke that I still carry with me more than a year after her death. Hiruko, in this sense, is in a deeply touching trip—dispensed of any material sense of a past, the Japanese language is the last and most emotionally charged axis in her sense of rootedness. For Tawada, language carries a specific form of memory and sense of belonging, which, in the face of atomization, becomes fraught and melancholic all at once. As the world becomes more interconnected and exophony becomes an excruciatingly contemporary condition, Tawada’s sci-fi becomes a recognizable parable for writers in exile or living abroad. Scattered All Over the Earth relies on the affect and importance of a mother tongue and, in the same movement, suggests that this is also form of fiction. It is then turned into an invention, a translation of something else, hovering between the purity of the kotodama and the sinfulness of the multilingual. The truly productive space, where Tawada displays all the force of her potential as a novelist, lies in the uncomfortable in-between. The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Tawada, Yoko. Scattered All Over the Earth. New York: New Directions, 2022. Tawada has always had a talent for ventriloquizing eccentrics, following singular minds through fugue and limbo. “Scattered All Over the Earth” departs from this model by introducing a team of such characters—a shift from exploring the inner worlds of linguistic displacement toward Babel-like allegory. As metafiction, it succeeds brilliantly, sketching a grim global dilemma with the sort of wit and humanism that Italo Calvino, in a discussion of lightness in literature, described as “weightless gravity.”

Assuredly, days are coming—declares the Lord—when it will no more be said, As the Lord lives who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, but rather, As the Lord lives who brought the Israelites out of the northland, and out of all the lands to which he had banished them. . . . Lo, I am sending for many fishermen—declares the Lord—. . . . And after that I will send for many hunters. . . . For My eyes are on all their ways, they are not hidden from My presence, their iniquity is not concealed from my sight. . . . Assuredly, I will teach them, once and for all I will teach them My power and My might. And they shall learn that My name is Lord [Jehovah or Yahweh] (Jeremiah 16:14–21). [6] The displacement is yet more surreal in “Memoirs of a Polar Bear,” a saga published in 2011 about three generations of ursine acrobats in Berlin. It is, as improbable as it sounds, a historical novel: Tawada fictionalizes the lives of Tosca, the Canadian-born star of the East German state circus, and her son, Knut, whom she rejected at birth, and whose miraculous survival at the Berlin Zoo sparked a worldwide craze in the early two-thousands. Tawada augments the family with an imperious matriarch from Moscow, who defects to West Germany and writes a best-selling memoir entitled “Thunderous Applause for My Tears.” The third promise to Abraham was that his descendants would be a blessing to all nations and families of the earth (see Genesis 12:2–3; 22:16–18). Most importantly, Jesus Christ, who atoned for the sins of all mankind, was born through his lineage. Other important spiritual blessings were delivered by the ancient prophets and other righteous descendants of Abraham. Eventually, Abraham’s posterity was to bear the priesthood and the gospel to all nations so that “the blessings of salvation, even of life eternal” might be extended to “all the families of the earth” (Abraham 2:9–11). And, as will be highlighted later, Abraham’s posterity has provided many religious blessings as well as significant secular advancements to the world through the ages. Hanging over the search for a native speaker is all the ethnocentric baggage that the concept implies. When Hiruko and the others reach Oslo, they find that they have arrived in the wake of Anders Behring Breivik’s devastating 2011 mass shooting, a grisly protest against immigration. The atrocity functions as a strange footnote to their adventure: Tenzo is meant to compete in a dashi competition at an Oslo sushi restaurant owned by an ultranationalist who also happens to be named Breivik—and who soon falls under suspicion of killing a whale. The turn of events skewers Japanese and Norwegian nationalism (both countries attempt to justify whaling through appeals to culinary tradition) by undercutting each society’s imagined uniqueness. Recipes, whales, and words all get around; even in a culture’s most chauvinistic totems, Tawada seems to say, there are traces of the foreign. The novel, a finalist for a 2022 US National Book Award in the category of translated literature, is the first installment of a trilogy. The sequel, Hoshi ni honomekasarete (Written in the Stars), was published in 2020, and the concluding volume Taiyō shotō (Islands of the Sun) came out in October 2022.Jacob, Nephi’s brother, records his vision of the Jews in 2 Nephi 6:11: “Wherefore, after they are driven to and fro, for thus saith the angel, many shall be afflicted in the flesh, and shall not be suffered to perish, because of the prayers of the faithful; they shall be scattered, and smitten, and hated; nevertheless, the Lord will be merciful unto them, that when they shall come to the knowledge of their Redeemer, they shall be gathered together again to the lands of their inheritance” (emphasis added). In this second condition and promise, a change of knowledge also leads to a gathering phase for Israel. Nanook pretends to be Japanese but is in fact an Eskimo who was born and grew up in Greenland. Fearing that his secret is about to be found out, Nanook leaves Nora and flees to Oslo, but Nora follows after him and the couple are reunited. They join forces with Hiruko, Knut, and Akash. Hiruko soon realizes that Nanook is not really Japanese. To adapt to his postapocalyptic reality and to care properly for Mumei, Yoshiro has had to transform himself, but he is in control of his remaking, painful though it is. If his old self isn’t suited to his new reality, he muses,

What if Japan no longer exists? That’s the premise of her latest novel, Scattered All Over the Earth , which follows six individuals of various national, ethnic, and gender identities, who somehow come together to aid a Japanese woman named Hiruko find another person who can speak with her in her native language. Meanwhile, Hiruko has invented a new language called Panska (a word combining “pan” and “Scandinavia”) which can be understood by most Scandinavians, but is so distinct that she is the only one who can speak it. The novel’s narrators rotate between the six characters as they travel together throughout Europe, looking to help Hiruko but also themselves. Hiruko and Knut set off together to look for other survivors from Hiruko’s vanished homeland who might speak the same mother tongue. The first place they visit is an “Umami Festival” being held in the German city of Trier. Slated to speak at the festival is Nanook, a Japanese chef conducting research on umami flavors. Hiruko’s native language has long been lost, her island devoured by water. She was a refugee in Norway and Denmark, where she finally settled and developed the language she calls Panska, which draws on the resemblances between Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. Panska, or Pan-Scandinavian, helps her move between countries and communicate with other immigrants. The prophet Zenos talks about the Jews in 1 Nephi 19:15–16: “Nevertheless, when that day cometh, saith the prophet, that they no more turn aside their hearts against the Holy One of Israel, then will he remember the covenants which he made to their fathers. . . . And all the people who are of the house of Israel, will I gather in, saith the Lord” (emphasis added). The first condition and promise identified is a change of attitude that leads to a gathering phase for the house of Israel to the lands of their inheritance. In Chapter 6, Hiruko arrives in Oslo, where she meets Nora and Akash, who was sent by Knut in his place, supposedly because Knut's mother is ill. Hiruko meets Tenzo/Nanook at the restaurant where the cooking competition is being held, and immediately knows he is not Japanese. Tenzo/Nanook admits the ruse, and Hiruko convinces him to tell Nora the truth. The cooking competition is called off because a dead whale washes up on the beach and both Tenzo/Nanook and the restaurateur who was holding the competition are suspected of harming it, but they are ultimately cleared of these charges.

The choice between good and evil presupposes agency; the exercise of our agency activates the law of justice and its resulting blessings and punishments. Without choices, we cannot exercise agency and experience the full range of blessings and punishments (see 2 Nephi 2:5–27; Alma 12:31–32; 42:17–25). The Prophet Joseph Smith’s teachings as recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants indicate that blessings and punishments are predicated upon compliance or non-compliance with divine laws, commandments, and judgments (see D&C 82:10; 121:36–37; 130:20–21). The Lord is absolutely just in rewarding each individual according to his or her works based upon individual levels of knowledge, accountability, and motivation (see Romans 2:5–6; 2 Nephi 9:25; Mosiah 3:11; Alma 41:2–6; 3 Nephi 27:14). In essence, the law of justice might be ­illustrated as follows: Tawada unveils another undeniable truth: woven into languages are the threads of loss and pain sewn by its speakers. As more and more languages become globalized, the very nature of speech will become stained with the experiences and cultures of people across the world – weakening the very idea of a “native tongue.” In Tawada’s dreamlike travelogue “Where Europe Begins,” an early short story, a young Japanese woman travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway tries to identify where, exactly, one continent shades into another, but none of the passengers can agree. Gradually, she descends into a trance brought on by reading Tungus and Samoyed fairy tales, which cut across the journey like a polar wind. The woman learns from an atlas that Japan is, tectonically, a “child of Siberia that had turned on its mother and was now swimming alone in the Pacific . . . a seahorse, which in Japanese is called Tatsu-no-otoshigo—the lost child of the dragon.” She begins to dread the finality of arrival. Israel’s punishments follow the classic pattern of the law of justice: our actions or reactions to the laws of God and the universe lead to certain consequences, which will result in experiences and feelings, which bring either happiness or sorrow into our lives. The law of justice relates to the other divine laws and provides the means by which people receive their just reward. In essence, the law of justice might be ­summarized as follows:

Throughout Scattered, different characters provide separate reasons for why the concept of a native language or a mother tongue is “rather childish.” When Hiruko realizes that the person she thought was Japanese actually was something else, she surprises herself with her own reaction: “When I found out we didn’t share a mother tongue, I wasn’t disappointed in the least. In fact, the whole idea of a mother tongue no longer seemed to matter; this meeting between two unique speaking beings was far more important.” According to Yoko Tawada, literature should always start from zero. She is a master of subtraction, whose characters often find themselves stripped of language in foreign worlds. They are, for the most part, at the mercy of circumstances: a literate circus bear betrayed by her publisher, an interpreter who loses her tongue, a nineteenth-century geisha discussing theology with an uncomprehending Dutch merchant. But their creator—a novelist, a poet, and a playwright—has chosen her estrangement. Tawada, who was born in Tokyo and lives in Berlin, writes books in German and Japanese, switching not once, like Vladimir Nabokov or Joseph Conrad, but every time she gets too comfortable, as a deliberate experiment. Her work has won numerous awards in both countries, even as she insists that there’s nothing national, or even natural, about the way we use words. “Even one’s mother tongue,” she maintains, “is a translation.”

The People of the Future

In Yoko Tawada’s new novel Scattered All Over the Earth, an ancient, purist notion of language runs counter to a cosmopolitan—albeit sterile—lifestyle. Tawada intertwines several stories to create a somewhat dystopian refraction of our present, in which languages merge and entire countries ominously disappear. The novel opens with Knut, a young linguist living in Denmark, who is watching a TV show about people from countries that have, at least politically, disappeared. He listens indifferently to the experiences of those born in East Germany, the Soviet Union, and the former Yugoslavia. Finally, he notices the curious tone of Hiruko, an immigrant who fled a country very much like Japan after a climate catastrophe and speaks a Pan-Scandinavian language that she claims to have invented. A second great world religion, that of Islam, arose among the Arab descendants of Abraham in the seventh century and has become the second largest world religion, with 1.2 billion followers, or 19.7 percent of the world’s population. The contributions of Islam in the areas of science, mathematics, philosophy, art, literature, architecture, and technology have been considerable. Islam has served as the moral and ethical basis of many nations, and its leavening influence has been felt in several empires, including those of the Turks, Persians, and Mughals.

In place of the original tree’s natural branches, the Lord grafted in branches of wild trees as a stimulant in hope that they might bear good fruit if nourished by strong roots (verses 9–12). Rejected by Israel, the gospel was given to the gentiles in Palestine and throughout the world. For a while, the wild branches did bear good fruit, but in time they began to overrun and sap the strength of the roots (verses 15–18; 29–37). The early apostolic Christian Church flourished among the gentiles but soon fell into apostasy. The natural branches scattered through four parts of the vineyard also started to bear good fruit, but in time they all turned wild (verses 19–29, 38–47). Scattered Israel also received Christ and His gospel but fell into apostasy. Tenzo, originally a Greenlander, is described as an “Eskimo” throughout the story, despite that term having racist and offensive implications. He explains that “people who consider the word ‘Eskimo’ racist think it’s enough to just replace it with ‘Inuit’, even though strictly speaking not all Eskimos are Inuit.” Through Tenzo’s perspective, Tawada casts an uncomfortable spotlight on the perhaps simulated discomfort that many non-natives exhibit over the treatment of indigenous people. Tenzo is not the only character “driven into an ethnic corner.” Everyone in Tawada’s novel experiences what it’s like to be exoticized. Foreignness is all just a matter of perspective. In the spiritual and religious realm, Christianity, which had its roots in earlier Judaic practice, has become the religion of 1.9 billion people, or 31.1 percent of the population of the world. The Judeo-Christian tradition, which derives from the spiritual labor of Abraham’s descendants, is a foundation of Western civilization, providing social and political values and the moral and ethical basis of the legal systems. That same tradition has made an emotional and psychological contribution in defining the value and purpose of life, the goodness of God, His love for all, and the Golden Rule as a guide for human conduct. In the social and cultural realm, the themes of the Bible have provided inspiration for great works of architecture, music, art, literature, and entertainment.

An Odyssey in Search of Compatriots

As I spend more time in Nashville, I’m also meeting Americans who are passionate about Japan in a way that surpasses my own knowledge of the country and its customs. There’s a woman who leads forest bathing tours inspired by the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku; a ramen chef whose passion originated from once hosting a Japanese exchange student; and a half-Japanese mom who can hear the subtle difference when her baby babbles with her English-speaking grandparents and her Japanese-speaking ones. This story is itself translated, of course—by Mitsutani from the Japanese—and it is a bravura performance. Elsewhere, Mitsutani and Susan Bernofsky, Tawada’s translator from the German, perform impressive feats with her linguistic effects (and her simplest sentences, too—few things are as hard to translate as artful candor or casual vernacular). Some interlanguage play is surely lost; in the Japanese version of Scattered All Over the Earth, for example, “Hiruko” is rendered in Latin script, making the character a kind of Western-Japanese hybrid not unlike a young woman in an earlier story who is described as “start[ing] to have one of those faces like Japanese people in American movies.” But what is lost in one place is compensated for elsewhere. Japanese words as foreign objects (usually in transliterated form) are very much a part of Scattered All Over the Earth.

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