Unreliability of Memory and Imagination to Create Change

Throughout The Emissary, both Yoshiro and Mumei seek access to an alternate world via either memory or imagination, neither of which, the author suggests, are reliable agents for change. While the narrator does not remain behind Yoshiro's consciousness for the entirety of the novel, much of The Emissary lives within Yoshiro's shapeshifting thoughts. Each task or movement Yoshiro completes is punctuated by lengthy lyrical drifts into the past. His reality is shaped almost entirely through memory, through comparison between his present life and his former life. Through Yoshiro's experience the author portrays the past as a place to which the individual attempts to escape. Similarly, Mumei's portions of the narrative drift into the surreal realms of his imagination. Rather than remaining fixed within his daily activities, the child converts the banal into the magical. Through these parallel modes of...