Coincidences and Connections Theme Analysis

Characters in A Tale for the Time Being lead difficult lives, and they often feel lonely and disconnected from others. However, their lives overlap in ways that demonstrate the connections and similarities between these characters. They often find one another through almost-impossible coincidences, which sets up the idea that human connections have a magical or spiritual quality to them. Additionally, the characters are alike not only in their thoughts and mannerisms but even experience similar events in their lives. Though this isn’t often obvious to the characters themselves, Ozeki suggests that all people are connected in complex and metaphysical ways.

The novel’s plot relies on several huge coincidences for characters to find one another, and these read as if they are somehow destined or meant to be. The precipitating event of the novel—Ruth finding Nao’s diary and letters in the Hello Kitty lunch box that has washed up on the beach—almost doesn’t happen, because Ruth doesn’t notice the box at first. When she does, she only means to take it home to throw away what she assumes must be trash. She leaves it on her porch, and her husband Oliver brings it in and opens it—he is too curious to heed Ruth’s admonishments against bringing it inside. These fortunate coincidences propel the events of the novel, making it seem like Ruth is destined to find Nao’s diary. Like Ruth, Nao has a connection to America and Japan, which helps Ruth understand the struggles that Nao writes about. Also, like Ruth, Nao is struggling with displacement and loneliness, which gets Ruth very invested in her story. Another striking coincidence in the book—which almost feels supernatural—occurs when Ruth is frantically looking for information about Nao’s family online, since she is worried that they might not have survived Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. She types in various search terms, including their names, but has no luck. Then, she mistypes Nao’s father’s name, Haruki, as “Harryki” and hits enter before she can correct it. This produces a surprisingly useful result that helps Ruth track down one of Haruki’s old friends. Ruth’s lucky mistake leads to her finding a person who knew Nao’s family, which makes it seem like Ruth was destined to find the friend and know more about Nao’s family.

Underscoring these seemingly predestined connections between the characters are events and tropes that are repeated in the lives of different characters across different timelines. This shows how people’s lives are connected even when they live in different times and places. One set of characters who echo each other are Haruki #1 (Nao’s great-uncle who was a kamikaze pilot in World War II) and his namesake, Haruki (Nao’s father). Haruki #1 was a scholar interested in philosophy who thought of suicide as an opportunity to gain control over the moment of one’s death by choosing it. He opposed war and chose to fly his plane into the ocean so that he wouldn’t have to kill other people. Haruki, too, is interested in philosophy and suicide—and unknown to Nao, he quits his job in an American software company because his work is being sold to a defense contractor. Nao thinks that Haruki #1 was a hero and is constantly disappointed by her father, but Ozeki shows that the two Harukis are more similar than Nao can imagine. In another example, Ruth explains to Oliver that according to an ancient Japanese legend, earthquakes occur when a gigantic catfish under the islands thrashes around. Oliver recounts that when he was a child growing up in Stuttgart, Germany, there were gigantic catfish that lived at the bottom of the River Neckar, and the fish swam up to the top right before an earthquake. The motif of the catfish appearing during earthquakes unites these two people from two different cultures, further emphasizing the idea that there are untold coincidences and connections even among people from different walks of life.

These connections and patterns emphasize the Zen Buddhist notion that all beings are linked together. In the epigraph that precedes Section III of the novel, Ozeki quotes Zen Master Dogen who says that “every being that exists in the entire world is linked together as moments in time, and at the same time they exist as individual moments of time.” The characters in this novel illustrate this idea of connectedness. While they exist as individuals, they’re also linked since they all exist in time—or, in other words, they’re all “time beings.” By using far-fetched coincidences as well as echoing similarities between characters and their experiences in different timelines of the novel, Ozeki exemplifies this Buddhist notion of an inexplicable connectedness between all creatures.