Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Tale for the Time Being, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Time, Impermanence, and the Present
The Difficulty of Communication
Life vs. Death
Coincidences and Connections
Sexual Perversion and Violence
Summary
Analysis
(1) Writing in her diary, Nao greets her reader and introduces herself as a “time being,” which she explains is “someone who lives in time.” She says that this would include everyone who’s ever existed or will ever exist. Nao is writing all this in her diary while she sits in a French-maid-themed café in Akiba Electricity Town, listening to a sad song. The song is playing sometime in the reader’s past, which is Nao’s present. Nao says that she wonders about who her reader might be, and she is curious if her reader wonders about her too.
Like Dogen in the Epigraph, Nao stresses that every creature is a “time being.” Since everything exists “in time,” and time passes, this means that everyone and everything is impermanent. Nao already seems to trust her reader with her deepest thoughts and views them as a confidant. This suggests that the reader-writer relationship can be just as meaningful (if not more so) as an intimate, face-to-face relationship. The connection between the reader and writer also seems to transcend time, since Nao is aware that her present is in her reader’s past.
Themes
Nao writes that by the time her reader reads these pages, “everything will be different,” since her diary contains her last days of life. She says it’s okay if the reader decides to stop reading, but if he or she continues, then the reader and Nao will “make magic.”
Again, Nao refers to change and impermanence when she says that “everything will be different” when her reader reads her diary. Nao seems to have decided that she will be dead by this time—which is a big change and an acknowledgement of Nao’s own impermanence. Nao hasn’t specified whether or not she’s going to commit suicide, though her belief that she’s going to die soon seems to allude to this. Nao also thinks that if she has found the right kind of reader for her diary, then they will “make magic” together, which refers to the possibility of deep (and perhaps metaphysical) connection between a reader and a writer.
Themes
(2) Nao writes that her reader must think she’s dumb for writing what she did in her previous entry. She admits that she would think this too. Nao notes that a man at the café has begun to stare at her, which she thinks is creepy. Nao is wearing her junior high school uniform and can tell the man has a fetish for young schoolgirls.
While Nao’s words are observant and thought-provoking, she tends to be very critical of herself, which shows that she is insecure and has low self-esteem. Though Nao hasn’t yet explained why she is planning to kill herself, this entry suggests that her low sense of self-worth might be one of the reasons. Meanwhile, the presence of the leering man in the café hints that there’s underlying danger in Nao’s life—just because Nao is young doesn’t mean the world around her is innocent.
Themes
However, Nao says that “everything changes, and anything is possible,” so she might change her mind about this man. Perhaps he might say something beautiful to Nao, and she might want to go out with him despite his plainness. They might check into a love hotel, where the man might end up raping Nao and choking her to death. Or perhaps the man might ask Nao to strangle him with her panties. Nao writes that none of these things might happen except in her mind and the reader’s, since together, she and the reader are “making magic, at least for the time being.”
Nao’s acknowledgment that “everything changes” means that everything is fleeting. Meanwhile, even as Nao ponders the possibility of being attracted to the man, her fantasy takes a dark turn into sexual abuse and murder. Nao is a vulnerable young woman—violence and death seem inseparable even from her fantasies. This suggests that she might have experienced something that make her assume the worst in people. Nao once again mentions that she and her reader are “making magic,” since they are sharing the same fantasies and ideas—the reader has the privilege of peeking into the writer’s mind. Nao concludes by acknowledging that the deep connection she shares with her reader is also only “for the time being”—like everything else, it is temporary.
Themes
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(3) In her diary, Nao apologizes for what she wrote about the man at the café. She doesn’t want her reader to think she’s “a nasty girl or a hentai” (a sexual pervert). She hopes that the reader isn’t a hentai either—a hentai would find Nao’s diary disappointing, since her writing won’t be overly sexual.
Nao seems disgusted by the hentais (perverts) she encounters. This is why she wants to ensure that her reader doesn’t put her in the same category as the hentais who victimize her.
Themes
Before Nao dies, she wants to tell someone the life story of her 104-year-old great-grandmother, Jiko. This is what Nao’s diary will contain. Jiko is a Zen Buddhist nun. She was a novelist, an anarchist, and “a feminist who had plenty of lovers, both males and females, but she was never kinky or nasty.” Nao says that the biography she will write about Jiko will be factual and empowering to women.
Nao makes it clear that she thinks sex can be empowering and fun if it is consensual—like the kind of sex that Jiko had, which wasn’t “nasty.” Nao dislikes the kind of perverted, “kinky” sex practiced by hentais, and she wants to dissociate herself from this.
Themes
(4) Nao writes that it is important to have clear goals in life, especially if you’re going to die soon. She confides in the reader that she isn’t going to be alive for long, even though she’s only 16 and hasn’t accomplished anything. Nao is going to “drop out of time,” and she says that maybe she and the reader can count her last moments together.
Nao reveals that she is very young (just 16), and that she will die soon. Again, though she doesn’t directly admit that she is planning to kill herself, this is heavily implied. Since a “time being” exists in time, Nao uses the phrase “drop out of time” to describe death—she suggests that after death, one is no longer part of time. To Nao, whose death is around the corner, every moment is precious, since she doesn’t have too many left. Her reader and confidant is now so important to her that Nao wants to count down her last moments with them.
Themes
