Review 2: 2025 Things Remembered and Things Forgotten by Kyoko Nakajima

Trans. Ian McCullough MacDonald and Ginny Tapley Takemori

It’s January in Japan 🇯🇵. For the past two years, I’ve made bold statements around diversifying my reading, with grand illusions of voyaging through every single country. A bookish friend, Marie, over on Instagram has created #readtheworld2025 which has provided me a relaxing bookish meander around countries and their writers that I’ve maybe explored once or twice before or, in many respects, never uncovered. First stop is Japan and Kyoko Nakajima’s Things Remembered and Things Forgotten: a collection of short stories that focus largely on human kind’s connection with their past.

Had I not ventured outside of my normal reading, I would never have come across Nakajima which would have been real shame because her writing is delicate, reflective and intelligent. In the surface each story holds a simplicity in style but scratch under the surface and you find truth and passion in holding a lens upon the relationships we have with one another and the threads that hold us and our ancestors together. Cultural traditions are woven into each tapestry, and is of particular interest to me due to my love of sociology and the studies I undertook in this area. Both ‘The Last Obon’ and ‘The Life Story of a Sewing Machine’ stood out for me in that respect as well as magical realism in the former which reminded me of Toni Morrison’s exquisite style.

I read another review that discussed how Nakajima delves in themes of ‘cultural amnesia’ and I enjoyed that description. Past and present seemed to battle against each other in many of the stories and the supernatural elements did not diminish their believability.

I highly recommend this book and writer. I will be reading more by Nakajima in the future. First stop, her novel ‘The Little House’.

I have travelled onto Algeria now and begun reading Yasmina Khadra’s When the Day Owes the Night. 😍