While Japanese literature in translation has held a firm spot in the Anglophone market since the post-war period, there has been a resurgence of interest over the last decade or so, particularly when it comes to Japanese women writers. At the same time, that interest has been almost exclusively on works of fiction.
Popular novelist Banana Yoshimoto is a prime example; since her first novel, Kitchen, was originally translated into English in 1993 she has been a darling of the Anglophone market and is often credited for being one of the first to open the floodgates for other contemporary Japanese women writers. But there is a disparity here—while more than ten of her fiction works have been translated into English, none of her essay collections or memoir writing have. Though writers like Yoshimoto are known in Japan as writers who work across multiple genres, what gets translated into English is almost exclusively fiction. Though some essay collections and memoirs are able to break into the market, like Shiori Ito’s Black Box, much of contemporary Japanese memoir writing remains untranslated.
In light of this disparity, I was delighted to come across Mayumi Inaba’s recently translated memoir, Mornings Without Mii, which centers on Inaba’s twenty-year relationship with her cat, Mii. I also lost a beloved pet several years ago, a toy poodle mix who died at 16, and I was curious to see how Inaba navigated her grief.
From the outset, Inaba bucks expectations as we spend the majority of Inaba’s mornings very much with Mii, tracing their relationship chronologically from the fateful night when Inaba rescues a tiny abandoned kitten in 1977. It isn’t until the final few chapters that Mii passes away.
What was the purpose of choosing this title, of positioning the book in such a way that seemed antithetical to what Inaba actually wanted to write about? Why not call the book Mornings With Mii if you wanted to spend so much time with the cat?
Outside of her work as a novelist and a nonfiction writer, Inaba was also a poet. Many of the memoir’s chapters conclude with short poems, which act as further reflections on themes she discusses in the chapter itself. Here, too, Inaba defies expectation and pushes the limits of what we expect a memoir to do for a reader. But beyond the inclusion of the poems themselves is Inaba’s minute attention to poetic image and language, always focalizing on her cat.
Mii was not only Inaba’s beloved companion of two decades, but also functions as a sort of reference point for key transitional moments in her life.
The comforting consistency of Mii’s presence radiates from the page as Inaba recounts lost jobs, moves to new cities, failed romantic relationships, loss of friends and family members, disappointed ambitions, and dreams deferred. Through it all, Mii remains. She even credits Mii as a muse for her literary work, writing:
Without Mii, I would never have come to live in this neighborhood. I would never have wandered around every nook and cranny of the reclaimed land, or gazed upon the seasonal colors of the water in the network of canals. Nor would I have become so absorbed in listening to the embryo of a neighborhood transforming.
Such a claim may seem hyperbolic to those who have not experienced a close bond with an animal.
American poet Ada Limón writes of a similarly deep relationship with her pug, Lily Bean, who helped her adjust to a new life following her partner to Kentucky and who comforted her through struggles with infertility. “Lily Bean has made me more patient, more willing to stay home and take care of myself,” Limón writes. “She’s seen me write four books—two completed and two that should never see the light of day. She’s helped me build community.”
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In February 2009, my family rescued a trembly, squinty, tear-stained poodle mix who was listed in the shelter’s documents as “John.” He was so heavily matted from months of neglect that he looked twice his actual size and because of his thick, wooly coat my mother suggested we name him Bear instead. We called him Bear until he got a haircut. When we saw the tiny creature excavated from beneath those layers of grime, we named him Popcorn.
Inaba and Limón both describe their animals in language that goes beyond that of a mere pet. But not all creatures elicit this style of language, particularly for Inaba. Early in Mornings Without Mii, she recalls a cat from her childhood, Shiro, who belonged to an old woman who lived with her family. There is no real fondness in her recollections of Shiro; if anything, she expresses a sort of disbelief that a cat who consistently goes missing, and causes an uproar each time it disappears, could be so beloved:
Watching all this going on, with no understanding of the nature of these animals, I couldn’t help but wonder at the humans running around and having their days disrupted all because of a cat.
These creatures take on a meaning that extends beyond their physical existence in part because of the circumstances of how—and when—they arrive in our lives.
Today, Mii might be described as Inaba’s emotional support animal of sorts. During times of upheaval and uncertainty, Inaba focuses on Mii’s dependence on her for food and shelter to keep pressing forward, even when she wishes to give up.
In April 2009, I experienced a complete mental breakdown. My PTSD manifested at its worst moments as agoraphobia, a deep dread of leaving the safety of interior spaces for any reason whatsoever. When I did not have Popcorn, I would remain sequestered for days at a time, certain that if I were to leave, something would happen. Popcorn forced me to go out each day—three times a day!—no matter what cataclysm my mind conjured.
The main function of any emotional support animal is to get their human outside of their sorrow, anxiety, and crippling overwhelm long enough for them to see beyond what they are feeling.
But there is more.
In ‘Magnetic Animal: Derrida, Wildlife, Animetaphor,’ Akira Mizuta Lippit writes, “The animal brings to language something that is not a part of language and remains within language as a foreign presence.” Later, Lippet highlights the function of animal-as-metaphor more directly, asking: “What does the animal as metaphor bring to language? What does it express that cannot otherwise be expressed?”
What does the cat allow Inaba to express? Mii offers a way to make sense of her life and her interiority through an external creature, a constant with her through significant personal and professional moments. When so much of life is roiling instability, the animal becomes an anchor. Looking back on her life with Mii at the end of her cat’s life, Inaba notes that “Mii has always been there. Even when I’d been working or spending time with friends, whether she was self-aware or not, she had remained at my side…”
When you’ve shared ten or twenty years of your life , it’s difficult not to see them as something beyond their corporeal existence. Mii entered Inaba’s life before she set off on her career as a writer and poet, before the dissolution of her marriage, before she moved to Tokyo where her literary career would blossom. When Mii passes away two decades later, Inaba is changed by age, experience, and the successes she only dreamed of when Mii was a kitten.
Wrapped up in one cat’s life are so many pivotal moments and moments of growth that make up who Inaba is as she pens her memoir. Mii is a representation of resilience, of taking leaps into the dark towards desires others may call selfish or reckless, of persevering even when the odds—whether economic or societal—are not in your favor. Even more crucial: Mii represents the fact that Inaba did achieve many seemingly impossible things. Mii is the constant companion who kept her company through many lonely nights of writing and also snapshot of Inaba’s ability to overcome.
It is therefore no surprise that Inaba struggled to let Mii go.
Popcorn died in the spring of 2022 at the age of sixteen. By the end of his life he had long officially retired from being a certified emotional support dog. While I often joked about his retirement, I was also grateful. Like Mii, he reflected my own resilience back to me, showing me how far I had come in our time together. He was a constant through seismic shifts in my life—graduations, moves across multiple states, shifts in career, a pandemic, survival of a physical assault. For him to be gone felt like the closing of a book. What comes after that final page?
“My mornings without Mii would start tomorrow,” Inaba writes after Mii passes away. “But this was a new time for me. I might weep, but I wouldn’t mourn. Mii had returned to the light, and I would still be able to meet her there hundreds, thousands of times again.”
It’s here that I began to understand Inaba’s choice to title her memoir the way she did. Mornings Without Mii is not only the story of the life and death of a beloved pet, but a new paradigm that Inaba herself enters into.
Julia Shiota
Julia Shiota is a writer and editor living in Minnesota. Her fiction and nonfiction work has appeared in Catapult, the Asian American Writers Workshop, Electric Literature, Poets & Writers, and elsewhere.