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) In her diary, Nao wonders where she should start, since she has so much to say. She says that when she texted Jiko this question, Jiko replied, “You should start where you are.” So, Nao takes her advice and begins describing Fifi’s Lovely Apron, the French maid café she’s in. The café is rather deserted, and the waitresses are standing around looking disappointed in the quality of their clientele.
Jiko’s answer to Nao’s question emphasizes the importance of the present moment, since she tells Nao to begin where she is—not in her past. Nao is sitting in a French maid café, a place that markets the sexual fetishization of French maids. This seems like a surprising—and potentially dangerous—place for a young teenager to hang out in. This perhaps implies that Nao has experienced things that have desensitized her to this highly sexualized environment.
Themes
The café is too expensive, and Nao says that she is lucky that her waitress friend Babette gives her free coffee. Babette has told Nao that there was a time when the café was very popular, with a line of people waiting to get in. However, the French maid fad is over now, which is why there are hardly any customers here. Nao always finds a quiet table here, so she thinks she should rename it “Fifi’s Lonely Apron.”
The transformation of the café’s “French maid fad” from trendy to unpopular highlights the idea that change is constant. It also clues readers in to the fact that sexual fetishes and deviancy are commonplace where Nao lives; something like a French maid fetish is seen as a lighthearted fad.
Themes
(2) Nao writes that Jiko really enjoys it when Nao tells her details about modern life, since Jiko has renounced civilization and lives in a temple in the mountains. Nao tells Jiko everything, even about the schoolgirls who get raped and murdered. Jiko understands that “shit happens,” and she says blessings for the “girls and the perverts and all the beings who are suffering in the world.” Nao write that it is Jiko’s job to pray, since she is a nun, and that Nao gives her a lot to pray about.
Nao and Jiko clearly have a close relationship—even though they are separated by age and lifestyle, Nao feels free to communicate freely with Jiko. She even tells Jiko about graphic sexual violence. Nao’s use of “shit happens” to describe tragedies like this imply that she’s become desensitized to violence, perhaps because she’s experienced it herself. None of this shocks Jiko either, since her spiritual practice stresses universal love and acceptance. Jiko not only loves and accepts Nao but also includes the “perverts” in her prayers, which shows that her love encompasses all beings—an important tenet of Buddhism.
Themes
When Jiko was ordained, she took a vow “to save all beings,” which meant that “she agreed not to become enlightened until all the other beings in this world get enlightened.” Nao thought of this as Jiko letting everyone go before her in an elevator. When she told Jiko that it would take forever for Jiko to get on the elevator, Jiko told her that this meant she and Nao should try even harder, but Nao refused to help her. Jiko had looked at her like she was saying a blessing for Nao. This made Nao feel safe, so she didn’t mind. Nao realizes that she never asked Jiko where the elevator goes, so she texts her the question.
Nao felt free to disagree with Jiko, knowing that Jiko’s love for her would never change. Jiko’s complete acceptance of Nao makes Nao feel safe, which encourages her to tell Jiko exactly what’s on her mind. Jiko’s unrelenting love for the world, which is part of her spiritual practice as a nun, is the reason she has taken her vow to let “all the other beings in this world get enlightened” before her. This self-sacrifice and all-encompassing love seems to be the reason Nao finds it easy to communicate with Jiko.
Themes
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(3) Nao writers that she hopes her reader wasn’t disappointed when he or she found Nao’s diary inside the cover of Marcel Proust’s book. She says that “some nasty stuff” has been happening in her life; on the day she bought the diary, she skipped school and went shopping to try and cheer herself up. The French cover of the diary is an “excellent security feature,” since her classmates wouldn’t realize that it’s actually a diary. If they did, they might steal it from her and post her writing online, since they have been bullying her. Nao says that she didn’t really know what the French title of the book—A la recherche du temps perdu—meant, but that she chose it because “French is cool and sophisticated feeling.”
Previously, Nao has described the hentais (sexual perverts) as being “nasty,” so her use of this word once again suggests that the difficulties she’s experiencing might have a sexual element to them. Meanwhile, Nao didn’t know that the French title on the cover of the diary she picked translated to “In Search of Lost Time,” which seems especially apt for her meditations on time and impermanence. This is yet another fortunate coincidence.
Themes
(4) Nao wants to write “something worthwhile” in her diary, so that she can “leave something real behind.” She feels like she doesn’t know much that’s “real”—she is leading a vapid life, just like everyone else around her. The only person who is different is Jiko, since she is the only one who doesn’t waste time. Nao wonders if wasted time is lost forever. If it is, that doesn’t mean a person gets to die any sooner—that requires “taking matters into your own hands.”
Nao’s self-derision comes across clearly in this passage. Nao’s comment about “taking matters into your own hands” again alludes to her intention to commit suicide—she wants to hasten her death, since, as she says, simply wasting time won’t make her die sooner. Nao tends to describe her life as being “unreal,” and by this, she seems to mean that her life seems worthless to her. By saying that she wants to leave something “real” behind when she dies, Nao means that she wants to leave something worthy. Nao is aware that she wastes her time, which is why her life is worthless. Like Jiko, she believes in the importance of every moment. But while Jiko puts this idea into practice by living each moment mindfully, Nao feels that she herself doesn’t do this.
Themes
(5) Before Nao started writing in her diary, she decided that she first needed to find out what the French title of the book meant. When she googled it, she found out that it meant “In search of lost time.” She thought it was “a cool coincidence” she was sitting in a French maid café and thinking about time, whereas Marcel Proust wrote an entire book about the subject a hundred years ago in France. Nao writes that she doesn’t know if coincidences mean anything, and that perhaps they do.
Nao is aware of the “cool coincidence” of her choosing a diary with an apt title—this is one of the many coincidences in the book that will show how characters are linked across time. In this passage, Nao also feels a connection with Marcel Proust. With this, the novel seems to indicate that all of humanity—not just the characters in the novel—is connected.
Themes
Nao wonders how anyone can search for lost time. She texts the question to Jiko, who replies with a poetic verse in Japanese that says, “For the time being,/ Words scatter…/ Are they fallen leaves?” The poem reminds Nao of a gingko tree in Jiko’s temple. She thinks that the tree is a “time being,” as is Jiko, and that Nao is looking for lost time among the scattered leaves underneath.
Nao is constantly in touch with Jiko, which again indicates the closeness of their relationship. Like the hypothetical reader of Nao’s diary, Jiko is an important confidant for Nao, which suggests that the relationship between spiritual guide and student can be just as valuable as the one between writer and reader. Jiko reminds Nao that even words of wisdom are “time beings,” and that they are impermanent like everything else.
Themes
Nao explains that the idea of the “time being” comes from an ancient Zen Master named Dogen Zenji, whose books are still considered important even though they were written more than 800 years ago. He is one of Jiko’s favorite authors. While Jiko has written many books, too, they are all out of print, so Nao thinks that “words and stories are time beings, too.”
Nao’s reflection that “words and stories are time beings, too” reinforces the impermanence of all things, even of books and ideas.
Themes
Nao says that Jiko is “supercareful” with her time and does everything really slowly. Jiko likes to joke that she is so slow because she wants to live longer. Nao doesn’t like this joke because the idea of a world without Jiko in it bothers her, even though it doesn’t bother Jiko. Nao doesn’t mind the idea of her own death since, she is “unexceptional”—but Jiko is special.
Jiko has made peace with her own impermanence. Nao, however, struggles with the idea of Jiko’s death because Jiko is special. She feels she herself is “unexceptional” and seems to use this idea to justify killing herself.
Themes
(6) Nao struggles to understand why she feels compelled to write down Jiko’s story. She thinks that she wants to do it because she loves Jiko and wants to remember her, but Nao herself is “not planning on sticking around for long.” She thinks that no one else would care about Jiko’s story. If she thought the world would care, she would write a blog about it, but Nao feels that nobody in cyberspace cares, either. Everyone is too busy posting their own stories to pay attention to anyone else’s.
While Nao has decided to kill herself, it seems like her desire to write about Jiko is an attempt to achieve some sort of permanence by leaving behind something worthwhile. Nao believes that one reason that people find it difficult to communicate with one another is because they are only interested in their own lives and points of view (unlike Jiko).
Themes
Nao likes the idea of writing everything down and leaving it for her reader to find. She thinks it is like she is “reaching forward through time to touch” the reader, which is “fantastically cool and beautiful.” She compares her diary to “a message in a bottle, cast out onto the ocean of time and space.”
Nao believes that a true connection between a reader and a writer—which can transcend time and space—is very special.
Themes
(7) Nao writes that she understands she is just assuming that her diary will find a reader—it might just be tossed into the garbage, like the young girls who are murdered by perverts and thrown into dumpsters. (Nao finds these incidents scary and disturbing.() She decides that she doesn’t mind the risk of her diary being thrown away, since that makes writing more interesting. She also knows that Jiko won’t care if her life stories get lost since, she is a Buddhist who understands impermanence. Nao tells her reader that he or she can find out more about Jiko’s life by reading the books Jiko wrote—though they are out of print, and Nao hasn’t been able to find them on Amazon.
Nao suggests that her words being thrown away would cause the same amount of sorrow as her being murdered and thrown away, since they both imply a complete disregard of a person’s being. Yet Nao decides that the risk of her writing being lost is worth it. Of course, the reader knows that Nao’s diary does find a reader: Ruth. Unlike Nao, who is very attached to the words she is writing, Jiko completely accepts the fleeting nature of all things, including her own life story.
Themes
