Character Analysis
Tagomi is the hero who stands up to the Nazis—eventually. Tagomi's main role here in the spy plot (see our "Brief Summary") is as the cover for the meeting of Baynes-Wegener and Yatabe-Tedeki. Tagomi may have the most action-hero like moment: when he uses his antique pistol to defend Baynes from German secret police. But he doesn't respond to that moment like an action film star. Instead of shooting Germans and yelling "yippee-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon" (like in Die Hard 2, the TV edit), Tagomi falls into a deep crisis. So he doesn't really fit our standard action-movie definition of hero.
But, darn it, we like him.
If we lay out Tagomi's bio, it might be hard to figure out why we like him. He's a leading member of the Pacific Trade Mission (so he's a government bureaucrat and a powerful guy—not the underdog at all) and his hobby is collecting American antiques. As for his personal life, we don't learn very much. He was once a professional flower grower (2.10), he served in China during the war (5.132), and he has a wife whom we never see (5.102). What we do see is that he spends most of his time in the office. Oh, and he consults the I Ching a lot.
Why We Like Tagomi: Stand-In for the Reader?
Yup—in spite of ourselves, we like him and here's some guesses as to why. Even though Tagomi doesn't really know what's going on with Baynes, he knows that there's something weird about the situation (2.41). This is also the same position that we are in as readers. On top of that, instead of being a big cry-baby about not knowing everything, he accepts it. Maybe that helps us readers go along with the flow of the book. (We can imagine Childan in this situation being too angry and racist to go along with the flow.)
And when it comes to the issue of Nazi Germany, Tagomi responds as we might. When Tagomi is listening to the lecture on possible replacement leaders, he has something like a panic attack and comes to a philosophical conclusion (which all the best panic attacks lead to): There is evil! It's actual like cement (6.181).
Confronted with Nazi Germany, Tagomi comes to a very complex philosophical point: that's just not right. It's probably the feeling most readers have when reading about Nazi Europe and all the things they've done: banning books, bringing back slavery, killing Africans, hunting down Jews. That's just not right. So, like the reader, Tagomi a) doesn't know everything and b) believes that there are some things worth fighting in the world, like Nazis.
Tagomi vs. The Nazis
That leads us to our main reason for liking Tagomi by the end of the book: in his own small way, he does make a stand against the evil he sees in the world. First, he realizes that Tedeki and Wegener have used him, but he doesn't get all huffy about that. Rather he sees this as proper: "Vital sometimes to be merely cardboard front, like carton" (14.185). He had a very minor role to play and he didn't even know he was playing it, but he hopes this role he played may help to make the world better.
Second, and more intentionally, Tagomi makes the purposeful choice to release Frank Frink rather than send him to Nazi Germany to be gassed. Sure, there are many people that Tagomi can't save, but when he sees this opportunity to save one person, he acts.
Tagomi vs. Us?
This leads us to our weird moment in the book, when Tagomi slips into our timeline and is upset by what he finds. After Tagomi kills the German SD men, he gets very upset about the nature of his world. After meditating on some Edfrank jewelry, he slips into our timeline. Now, if we were in a Nazi-controlled world, we might be happy to find a world without Nazis. And yet throughout the experience, Tagomi notes how scared and unhappy he is, calling the experience a "Mad dream," "Hopeless," and "dreadful gliding among shadows" (14.123, 125, 134). When he's not sure that he'll find a way back to his world, he considers suicide (14.157).
In that way, Tagomi reacts totally differently from the way we probably feel about this situation. A world where the Nazis lost? Well, sign us up—that's the world we want. And yes, we could say that Tagomi doesn't know that the Nazis lost, and maybe if he did, he'd be happy to be in that world. But his initial reaction may also remind us that, even if it's a terrible world, that's Tagomi's home, where his life is. Is that a sad statement about how we cling to bad things just because they're familiar? Or is it a happy statement about how, even in a "Hitler Wins" world, life goes on?
Tagomi's Timeline