A Tale for the Time Being Study Guide

Ruth Ozeki is an author, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. After graduating from Smith College with degrees in English and Asian studies, Ozeki pursued graduate work at Nara University in Japan. Afterward, she returned to America and began working in TV and films, first as a production set designer and then as a documentary filmmaker for Japanese TV. She eventually made two of her own films, which were highly acclaimed and shown at several film festivals. Ozeki’s first novel, My Year of Meats, was published in 1998 and was awarded the Kiriyama Prize as well as the Imus American Book Award. A Tale for the Time Being, which was published in 2013, is Ozeki’s most recent work of fiction. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Ozeki published her first work of nonfiction in 2016, called The Face: A Time Code, in which she traces every thought she has for three hours while looking at her face in the mirror. This book is a meditation on the passage of time and of being aware of each moment, which are themes Ozeki also brings up in A Tale for the Time Being. Ozeki teaches creative writing at Smith College.

In A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth worries that Nao and her family might have been victims of Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which decimated entire coastal towns and claimed around 10,000 lives. This was the most powerful earthquake ever to hit Japan, and it triggered immense waves that reached over 130 feet in height and traveled rapidly, at over 435 miles per hour. As a result, residents of coastal towns had only about 10 minutes of warning before they were engulfed by the waves. Over 200,000 people ended up being displaced by the earthquake as their homes were washed away. Another tragedy in Japan’s history that the novel documents is the Japanese involvement in World War II. Japan joined the Axis powers—Germany and Italy—in 1940, after signing the Tripartite Pact. In 1941, Japanese forces carried out a coordinated attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor, after which the U.S. officially joined the Allies. Japan suffered as a result of America’s attacks—and in 1943, in a desperate attempt to make up their losses, the Japanese government decreed that students 19 and older were required to drop out of university and enroll for military service. In the novel, Nao’s great-uncle Haruki #1 is one of these students, and he ends up becoming a kamikaze pilot—a pilot who would go on a suicide mission and crash his plane into an American warship. The novel parallels kamikaze pilots with the terrorists who bombed the Twin Towers on 9/11. Nao and Ruth and the other characters are shocked by the terrorist attack and are very disturbed as they witness the desperate and heart-wrenching images of New Yorkers trying—and often failing—to escape death. The novel also portrays the ensuing violence against people of color in America and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as tragic aftermaths of 9/11.

Like A Tale for the Time Being, Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore has two linked plotlines that are narrated in alternating sections. Both novels also have metaphysical elements and a splash of magical realism—they puzzle over whether dreams can have consequences in the real world. The books also share a supernatural crow figure that acts as a guardian, and each has characters who believe that their spirits can leave their bodies and travel to other realms. Ozeki has said that A Tale for the Time Being demonstrates how characters call to their writers, as Nao does to the character Ruth. Nao and her story become an inextricable part of Ruth’s life, and soon, Ruth finds herself unable to keep their lives and worlds separate. Another novel that shares A Tale for the Time Being’s metafictional (self-referential) elements is At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien, in which the author creates characters who then interact with the original (fictional) author himself. Like the character Ruth in A Tale for the Time Being, the fictional author of At Swim-Two-Birds ends up questioning his own agency and wonders if he is at the mercy of his creation.