The Tatami Time Machine Blues

In the boiling heat of summer, a broken remote control for an air conditioner threatens life as we know it in this reality-bending, time-slipping Japanese science fiction sequel to The Tatami Galaxy.

During a scorching August in Kyoto, our protagonist and his worst friend, Ozu, are locked in a glaring contest in a four-and-a-half-tatami-mat room. Ozu has spilled Coke on the air conditioner’s remote control―the only AC in Shimogamo Yusuisuiso, their famously shabby sweatbox of an apartment building. Vengeful and despairing, our protagonist discusses countermeasures with his secret crush, the reliably blunt Akashi, when Tamura, a strange young man with a bad haircut, appears.

Tamura claims to be a time traveler from 25 years in the future, and shows off the time machine he uses to travel. Our protagonist has a brilliant idea: the sweetest revenge would be to go back one day in time and retrieve the functioning remote control. His simple fix is complicated by Ozu and several others who are also eager to take a ride back in time. But in attempting to alter the past, our protagonist foresees the world's extinction. Even more troublingly, Akashi mentions she’s bringing someone to the upcoming bonfire . . . and it's not him. Only one thing remains certain: it's going to be a very long month.

Obliteration? Salvation? Coca-Cola? Castella cake? What does the time machine hold for our (not quite) heroes? It all depends on which one gets there first.

Translated from the Japanese by Emily Balistrieri

• Quirky College Comedy: Meet a group of Kyoto university students whose lazy summer is thrown into chaos by a spilled Coke, a broken AC remote, and the sudden appearance of a strange young man claiming to be from 25 years in the future.
• Low-Stakes Time Travel: When the mysterious visitor reveals his functioning time machine, the protagonist hatches a brilliant plan: travel back one day in time to retrieve the remote before the fateful accident. What could possibly go wrong?
• Slice of Life Sci-Fi: This story blends the mundane anxieties of a sweltering summer in a shabby apartment building with reality-bending adventures, as friends and rivals complicate the simple mission with their own temporal joyrides.
• A Sequel to The Tatami Galaxy: Fans of the original will delight in this return to a beloved world, where a simple twist of fate threatens to unravel the universe, and a secret crush’s social plans cause just as much panic as a potential time paradox.

Tomihiko Morimi was born and raised in Nara Prefecture, Japan. His first novel Tower of the Sun, which he wrote while studying at Kyoto University, won the 15th Japan Fantasy Novel Award. In 2006, he received the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize for the novel The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, and in 2010, Penguin Highway was awarded the Japan SF Grand Prize. In 2023, the English edition of The Tatami Galaxy was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize. Several of his works have been adapted into critically acclaimed anime series and films. He still lives and works in Nara.