TOKYO
296 pages, 6 x 9
6 color figures - 44 B&W figures
Paperback
Release Date:06 Mar 2018
ISBN:9781573660662
A novel in three parts, linked by a single narrative of disaster, loss, and longing.
TOKYO is an incisive, shape-shifting tour de force, a genre-bending mix of lyric prose, science fiction, horror, and visual collage exploring the erotic undercurrents of American perceptions of Japanese culture and identity.
By turns noir, surreal, and clinical in its language and style, TOKYO employs metaphors of consumption, disease, theater, gender fluidity, monstrousness, and ecological disaster in intertwined accounts touching on matters of cultural appropriation, fiction's powerful capacity to produce immersive realities, and the culturally corrupting late capitalist excesses that entangle both the United States and Japan.
The novel opens with a fantastic, slyly comic report written by a Japanese executive, describing the anomalous bluefin tuna his company purchased at Tokyo’s iconic fish market, as well as the dissolution of the executive’s marriage to his Japanese-American, or Sansei, wife. But when an American writer—whose own Sansei wife was previously married to a Japanese executive—begins investigating the report’s author and his claims, assisted by a mysterious Japanese correspondent the American suspects may once have been his wife’s lover, identities begin to scramble until it’s uncertain who is imagining who, and who is and isn’t Japanese. Meanwhile, a secret plot to establish pure Japaneseness through the global distribution of genetically engineered bluefin tuna seems to be rushing toward its conclusion like a great wave.
TOKYO is an incisive, shape-shifting tour de force, a genre-bending mix of lyric prose, science fiction, horror, and visual collage exploring the erotic undercurrents of American perceptions of Japanese culture and identity.
By turns noir, surreal, and clinical in its language and style, TOKYO employs metaphors of consumption, disease, theater, gender fluidity, monstrousness, and ecological disaster in intertwined accounts touching on matters of cultural appropriation, fiction's powerful capacity to produce immersive realities, and the culturally corrupting late capitalist excesses that entangle both the United States and Japan.
The novel opens with a fantastic, slyly comic report written by a Japanese executive, describing the anomalous bluefin tuna his company purchased at Tokyo’s iconic fish market, as well as the dissolution of the executive’s marriage to his Japanese-American, or Sansei, wife. But when an American writer—whose own Sansei wife was previously married to a Japanese executive—begins investigating the report’s author and his claims, assisted by a mysterious Japanese correspondent the American suspects may once have been his wife’s lover, identities begin to scramble until it’s uncertain who is imagining who, and who is and isn’t Japanese. Meanwhile, a secret plot to establish pure Japaneseness through the global distribution of genetically engineered bluefin tuna seems to be rushing toward its conclusion like a great wave.
Mejia's TOKYO requires effort, without question, but one's labors are compensated many times over by a work so provocative, inventive, and haunting.'
—The Georgia Review
'TOKYO is rewarding and responsible in that its form is all about process and awareness—of readership, authorship and culture. If you're up for a book that upends what a story usually looks like, find Michael Mejia's TOKYO.'
—SLUG Magazine
‘A noir told through bodies, Michael Mejia’s TOKYO is a song—a labyrinth—an obfuscation that leaves the reader ravenous for more gleaming riddles—oh!—enticing enigma.’
—Lily Hoang, author of A Bestiary
‘In TOKYO the boundaries between the realistic and the fantastical flex, blur, and eventually disappear altogether. Beautifully propelling us through a series of styles and voices, moving from words to photographs to paintings and back again, this is a novel that first draws us in, then reveals itself as a novel, then becomes an embodied interrogation of art and originality. A highly original and provocative work.’
—Brian Evenson, author of A Collapse of Horses
Visually arresting and gorgeously terrifying, Michael Mejia’s passionate immersion in a TOKYO of the imagination delivers an electrifying rush of sizzling sensations, a proliferation of ethical provocations, and the erotic thrill of intimate betrayal.’
—Melanie Rae Thon, author of Voice of the River, Silence Song, and The 7th Man
Michael Mejia is the author of the novel Forgetfulness,and his writing has been published in many journals and anthologies. A recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, he is editor in chief of Western Humanities Review, co-founding editor of Ninebark Press, and a professor of creative writing at the University of Utah.
