The Last Children of Tokyo

Lore & Background

Yoshiro's wife Marika belongs to the underground Emissary Association, which helps young people stow away on foreign ships so international scientists can study Japanese children's health. Mumei becomes fascinated with a neighbor girl, Suiren, who later disappears. Mumei collapses at school and awakens as a 15-year-old in a wheelchair, having skipped several years. He meets Suiren again, also in a wheelchair, and she asks him to go with her across the sea. As he tries to stand, darkness envelops him and he falls into the dark waters of the strait.

Reader's Guide

The Last Children of Tokyo has been critically received as an impactful work of speculative fiction. Kirkus Reviews called it an 'ebullient meditation on language and time.' John Self in The Guardian described it as a 'mini-epic of eco-terror, family drama and speculative fiction,' noting it is no typical dystopian novel but satirical and tragic. Parul Sehgal in The New York Times observed that Tawada mirrors reality in a prosaic mission. Literary scholars Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt and Aidana Bolatbekkyzy argue that Mumei's metamorphosis suggests an inversion of evolution and a return to water, questioning the concept of 'human' and the capitalist myth of progress. The novel won the National Book Award 2018 for Translated Literature under its US title The Emissary.

Did You Know?

• The novel was originally published in Japanese as Kentoshi (献灯使) in 2014.
• The English translation by Margaret Mitsutani was published in the UK in 2018 and in the US as The Emissary.
• The story is set in a Japan devastated by an unspecified man-made global catastrophe.
• The novel won the National Book Award 2018 for Translated Literature.