Scattered All Over the Earth

Product Information

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. Completing the quintet is Akash, an Indian transgender woman who tags along after taking a fancy to Knut. 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.

From the twentieth-century dystopia that was the Soviet Empire, Tawada has moved on to dystopias of our own times. The Emissary, inaugural winner of the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2018 and to my mind her best novel—luminous and humane while as bracingly weird as ever—is a kind of shadow companion to Scattered All Over the Earth (itself billed as the first book in a trilogy). In The Emissary, Japan has become cut off from the world for reasons that aren’t entirely clear but seem to be a combination of nuclear disaster, climate change, and an earthquake. In its isolation, it outlaws the use of foreign words; the knowledge of other countries fades. Yoshiro, once a novelist, is now more than one hundred years old, but in the toxic new climate of Japan, the elderly live on and on, tending to the nation’s frail and failing children. Yoshiro’s great-grandson Mumei is tottering and birdlike, with wispy hair and wobbly teeth. Yet he is marvelously cheerful: his generation is “equipped with natural defenses against despair.”Tenzo, as it happens, isn’t Japanese at all. He’s an Indigenous Greenlander originally named Nanook, who stumbled into a Japanese identity while living in Denmark and Germany; because of his work and his anime-inspired hair style, everyone, including Nora, has assumed that he’s from the “land of sushi.” The character is an elaborate joke at the expense of ethnolinguistic authenticity: he has, ironically, assumed a Japanese identity to escape the assumptions around being an “Eskimo” in Denmark. Yet Tenzo’s escape from one authenticity trap only leads him to another, when he’s forced to leave for Oslo to keep Nora from learning that he isn’t Japanese. Pattern of scattering and gathering. Of particular interest is the notable pattern of the scattering, which began in the eighth century BC, and the gathering of the house of Israel, which began with the Restoration and has not yet been completed. The pattern is found often in the scriptures: the first shall be last and the last shall be first (see Matthew 19:30; D&C 29:30). This pattern was also prophesied concerning the scattering and gathering of Israel (see Jacob 5:63). As seen from the chart above, the later Arab tribes included descendants of both Abraham (primarily through Ishmael’s lineage) and Lot. Note how the ancestors of the Arabs multiplied into more nations and greater numbers far more rapidly and extensively than the Israelites, who were descendants of Jacob, just one of the twenty-one known grandsons of Abraham (see 1 Chronicles 1:29–34). [1]

Thus, the first group scattered (the ten tribes) will be the last group gathered as the New Jerusalem is finally established and the Savior’s millennial reign begins. And the last group scattered (the remnants of Israel, especially descendants from Ephraim, who are probably a sub-group split off from the ten tribes that settled among the gentile nations) would be the first group gathered as the early Church leaders, who come from this group, began the restoration of all things and received the keys for the gathering of Israel (see D&C 109:57–60). This distinctive pattern of scattering and gathering is illustrated in the following chart:We now need to review how these three promises of posterity, land, and being a blessing as given in the Abrahamic covenant have evolved over the centuries. First, we will summarize how Abraham’s posterity has multiplied into key peoples and nations of the latter days. Then, we will highlight the major historical events concerning Abraham’s posterity and their promised land during the past four millennia, especially in connection with the scattering and gathering of the house of Israel as the earth and her inhabitants were prepared for the gospel restoration. Finally, the effects and blessings of Abraham’s descendants will be discussed so that we can better understand their special influence upon latter-day events. Discerning how the three great Abrahamic promises have unfolded over the past four millennia, especially in more recent times, helps us recognize their pivotal role and significance in contemporary events. 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.

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.” Multiple prophetic viewpoints of a latter-day return of the house of Israel are provided in the Bible and other scriptures. [5] Major scriptural passages concern not just the gathering to their lands of inheritance but, more importantly, the restoration of the covenant house of Israel to their promised lands in the latter days. The return of the house of Israel in the last days seems to be in two phases: a gathering phase and a restoration phase . Gathering refers to their being brought together from their scattered places, whereas restoration refers to God’s renewal of covenants with them unto their lands of inheritance. This return of the house of Israel will reveal God’s great power and promises. As Jeremiah prophesied:

In the Book of Mormon, Lehi speaks of all Israel in 1 Nephi 10:14: “And after the house of Israel should be scattered they should be gathered together again.” Then, three later successive passages in the Book of Mormon highlight three stages or conditions that precede the gathering and restoration of the Jews in the last days. These events open the way for all of the house of Israel to be gathered and restored to the lands of their inheritance.