Happy Wednesday! I’ve said that it’s feeling autumnal and there’s something about autumn that makes these three Japanese novels feel really apt. I’ve said they’re in translation which is a bit of a “well obviously” because I haven’t been hiding a secret talent for Japanese, but there’s a definitely a bit of a vibe about this sort of Japanese novel too – it’s sort of cozy and low stakes and reflective. And that is what I want in back to school season, even though it’s a long time since school!
Tsubaki Stationery Store by Ito Ogawa*
Hatoko has recently returned to Kamakura to take over her grandmother’s stationery store and scribe business. As a child Hatoko rebelled against the expectation that she would become a scribe and the atrict training that was required and ran away (sort of) as soon as she was old enough. But now she is back, she starts to find her place in the community as she writes various correspondence for the locals and she starts to uncover the secrets of her grandmother as the seasons of her first year running the shop gently pass. This is really lovely. Hatoko gets into a sort of flow state when she’s writing and reading about her process is very soothing too. I could really imagine her neighbourhood, the people that she helps, the friends she makes and the food she eats. There are no bad consequences from her letters to worry about and it has a real gentle rhythm about it that is sort of hypnotic.
The Cat Who Saved The Library by Sosuki Natsukawa*
This is the sequel to former BotW The Cat Who Saved Books and Tiger the Cat is back and saving more books. This time our human is 13-year-old Nanami who has asthma and spends more time with books than she does with other children.
Nanami had a peculiar habit of reading multiple books at once, yet still feeling the need to reach for new ones. There were always so many books she wanted to read, far more than she could keep up with.
I mean I think we know that this is basically me. I have such a huge pile of books to read and so many on the go at once and yet I still find myself standing in front of the to-read bookshelf trying to find something I want to read next. Anyway. Nanami notices that books are disappearing from the library where she spends a lot of her free time and finds herself helping a talking cat to save the books from forces of darkness. I enjoyed this as much as I did the first one – and was delighted to see some of the characters from that first book reappear here. And of course there are plenty of parallels with what is going on in the book and with books being banned in real life.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa*
I often find Japanese fiction slightly more melancholic than I want it to be, but I pretty much always enjoy it anyway. This is one of those. The central character is Takako who goes to stay in the flat above her uncle Satoru’s bookshop after her boyfriend tells her he is marrying someone else. What happens then is a discovery of shared community, making of new friends, a new found love of reading and a greater understanding of love. It’s short but it’s very readable, although I preferred the first section that is about Takako, her uncle and the community around the bookshop to the second part which has the return of Satoru’s long disappeared wife. This has got a sequel out now, which I’ve seen in bigger bookshops.
And that’s your lot for this week – enjoy!
