Book Review by Pat Allchorne: If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura

I saw this book on my daughter’s bookshelf when I was staying at her house cat-sitting a little while ago. Just as the word “book” in a title grabs my attention, so it is with “cat”.

I sometimes find that books written in translation tend to lose something, but I wasn’t far into this one before I realised that that doesn’t apply here. It is a book with each chapter being one day, beginning on a Monday, and each chapter is divided into short sections. It is set in Japan and begins with a young man of thirty, a postman, just diagnosed with a brain tumour. He has not long to live, six months at most but probably less, and he wonders should he do a bucket list of “ten things to do before I die”.

He arrives home from the doctor’s and collapses once inside, waking some time later to find his cat – Cabbage – lying with him, and a person looking remarkably like himself only dressed differently from his own monochrome style,  in brightly coloured holiday gear complete with sun glasses. He announces himself to be the Devil: he becomes Aloha, due to the brightly coloured clothes he is wearing. He has come to offer an extension to life, but in exchange for something: our protagonist has to sacrifice something to gain one day more, and not just himself sacrificing it, but it will disappear from the whole world. The more he sacrifices, the more days he will gain. 

The young man’s mother, who died four years previously, always told him that in order to gain something you have to lose something. As with much in this book, we can philosophise on this at a deeper level, but what is worth losing to gain another day of life?

It begins with chocolate as a suggestion, until Aloha tastes some …..

Aloha’s suggestions as to what can be eliminated from the world get our protagonist thinking philosophically throughout the book. With each thing to go, he can use it one more time, and when it comes to eliminating movies, his thoughts go to a line from a Charlie Chaplin film: “Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish”. All the ostensibly unnecessary things in life suddenly begin to take on meaning; they have their own importance as they are part of what we are, and what has made us how we are. How important are they compared to life?

I have often heard people say that they would like to live a long life so long as they had all their faculties, that quality of life is what matters over quantity. It really makes the reader think; what matters most to us?

Several things vanish as the week goes on, till we reach a point where the young man’s ex-girlfriend presents him with a letter written by his mother. The instruction was to give it to him if he was ever going through a difficult time. It was written when she knew she was dying, and thinking about the ten things to do before that happened, but she realised that the ten things revolved around her son, and so she wrote a list of the ten things that were good and beautiful about him. We all have gifts which are more important than possessions, but some possessions which seem minor actually have much importance to our quality of life.

There is a short time in the book when Aloha gives Cabbage the quality of speech. He speaks with an upper-class accent and addresses his owner as “Sir”. We think we can interpret our animal’s sounds correctly, but apparently Cabbage has certain issues he wants his owner to readjust. 

When Aloha wants to make cats disappear from the world, that is a step too far for our protagonist. He has realised over the week that some things are just necessary in this world, but then, who will look after Cabbage when he is gone?

His mother’s last letter to him finishes with her desire that he make up with his father, to whom he has not spoken since her funeral. His father is a watch and clock maker and repairer, and sits in his shop day after day doing what he loves. The book finishes with the young man getting on his postman’s bicycle, with Cabbage in his basket, pedalling towards his father’s workshop to hand the cat over. Aloha has admitted defeat over this last elimination; cats stay.

In reading of the young man’s journey to discover what really matters in life we, too, are made to think about what matters to us, making us reassess our priorities. As I have got older, I have realised that the simple things in life are what bring us not just the most pleasure but the most lasting pleasure, and I, for one, could not sacrifice any of them to gain more time here on earth, for without them it would be a form of death.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Our narrator’s days are numbered. Estranged from his family, living alone with only his cat Cabbage for company, he was unprepared for the doctor’s diagnosis that he has only months to live. But before he can set about tackling his bucket list, the Devil appears with a special offer: in exchange for making one thing in the world disappear, he can have one extra day of life. And so begins a very bizarre week . . .

Because how do you decide what makes life worth living? How do you separate out what you can do without from what you hold dear? In dealing with the Devil our narrator will take himself – and his beloved cat – to the brink. Genki Kawamura's If Cats Disappeared from the World is a story of loss and reconciliation, of one man’s journey to discover what really matters in modern life.

This beautiful tale is translated from the Japanese by Eric Selland, who also translated The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide. Fans of The Guest Cat and The Travelling Cat Chronicles will also surely love If Cats Disappeared from the World.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Genki Kawamura is an internationally bestselling author. If Cats Disappeared from the World was his first novel and has sold over two million copies in Japan and has been translated into over fourteen different languages. His other novels are Million Dollar Man and April Come She Will. He has also written children's picture books including Tinny & The Balloon, MOOM, and Patissier Monster. Kawamura occasionally produces, directs, and writes movies, and is a showrunner. He was a producer of the blockbuster anime film Your Name, which is currently being developed into an live-action film by J. J. Abrams.