Reviews and Quotes of 'Days by the Satoshi Yagisawa at Morisaki Bookshop' Just finished reading this delightfull book
Mohan Gulrajani
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
The Japanese bestseller: a tale of love, new beginnings, and the comfort that can be found between the pages of a good book.
Days At The Morisaki Bookshop was Japanese author Satoshi Yagasawa’s debut novel in 2010.
Translated from the Japanese by Eric Ozawa, this slim novel — first published and filmed in Japan in 2010 — is another heart warmer about how literature helps open up emotionally constipated people who are not good at expressing their feelings.
Takako, the novel's plainspoken 25-year-old narrator, is blindsided when a work colleague she's been seeing for more than a year announces he's getting married to a beautiful woman in the same Tokyo office. In her grief, Takako quits her job and takes to her bed. Given the choice between returning to her home in Kyushu or moving into the musty spare room above her oddball uncle's second-hand bookshop in the Jimbocho book quarter of Tokyo, she chooses the latter.
The unadorned simplicity of Takako's voice is anything but subtle, but it's somehow winning in its guilelessness. About the time she spent at the Morisaki Bookshop, she says, "That's where my real life began. And I know, without a doubt, that if not for those days, the rest of my life would have been bland, monotonous, and lonely."
Takako gradually comes to appreciate her Uncle Satoru, whom she at first characterizes as "the exact opposite of anyone's idea of a dignified man." Dishevelled but kind, her uncle urges her to consider his bookshop as her harbour and tells her about his own peripatetic youth before he took over his father's business. "Maybe it takes a long time to figure out what you're truly searching for," he says.
To her uncle's delight, Takako, a non-reader, is gradually pulled into the modern classic Japanese novels piled everywhere in his shop — Junijiro Tanizaki, Osamu Dazai. Her perspective expands. Satoru introduces her to his favourite coffee shop, where she befriends other bibliophiles. Takako tries to help her uncle figure out why his wife Momoko left him without a word of explanation years earlier, and what Satoru — and she herself — might do differently in their relationships.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop draws a strong connection between the empathy unleashed by great literature and Takako's growing sense of self-confidence and well-being. Reading, she tells us with typical directness in this sweet tale, "opened a door I had never known existed."
Book review: Bestseller Days At The Morisaki Bookshop twee tale of finding peace at a second-hand bookstore
A colossus on international bestseller lists, this novella about the mind-expanding effect a Tokyo bookshop has on an ordinary office lady is unfortunately twee to the point of semi-blandness and lacks ambition.
It is part of a wave of feel-good, easily digestible books now emerging from East Asia, seemingly written to cater to that most indulgent instinct of book lovers – their love for the transformative space of the bookshop.
First published in Japanese in 2010, it was author Satoshi Yagisawa’s debut and won the Chiyoda Literature Prize.
It has been newly translated by Eric Ozawa for the English market, perhaps with a greater marketability now, given the nostalgia for independent spaces and more generally as an escape from the world.
Days At The Morisaki Bookshop is written in that by now all-too-familiar “Japanese voice” – detached introspection, stunted connection with others and an overwhelming quiet as if the world has been muffled with a duvet or submerged underwater.
It is essentially a two-parter. The first begins with the deliciously absurd premise that Takako, who thinks she has been dating her colleague, is suddenly confronted one day with him announcing his marriage to another woman.
Gaslit and heartbroken, she accepts her oddball, estranged Uncle Satoru’s invitation to live with him in his second-hand bookstore in Tokyo’s Jimbocho district, the largest concentration of second-hand bookshops in the world.
There, she slowly gains perspective and settles into the pedestrian rhythms of reading, drinking at coffee shops and reconnecting with her uncle, gradually regaining the strength to leave.
The second, and more interesting section, introduces the more complex character of Aunt Momoko, Uncle Satoru’s hippie wife who had years earlier upped and left him with no explanation, but who has now returned.
At her uncle’s request, Takako returns to the bookshop to figure out why, and a tragedy is quietly revealed.
The relationship between Takako and Uncle Satoru is then consigned to the backdrop as Aunt Momoko launches her charm offensive, taking Takako on a trip to the mountains.
Both parts of Yagisawa’s tale are beautifully but procedurally sketched – romanticism but without the sturm und drag.
The time spent at Morisaki Bookshop is as edifying as it is inconsequential. Much like reading this book, the experience is self-contained, suffusing readers with an escapist peace that they can then store for their more hectic “real lives”, without the experience necessarily meaning anything in itself.
The little moments that are supposed to create incisive meaning, upon closer examination, more resemble semi-meaningful glances and vaguely suggestive dialogue.
Takako does transform from a person who would not give books a second glance to an avid reader, but this feels trite and self-congratulatory, especially since it is written for people who likely love reading.
There is, however, a pleasingly cinematic finale, written as a second-hand account that one imagines could be played out perfectly on screen in silence.
And perhaps with actors filling in the blank spaces, the reticence in this book could be better coloured in with micro-expression and movement.
As text, this is too mild to be satisfying, and is perhaps more suited as a good stress-relieving or commuting read.
‘Days at the Morisaki Bookshop’: An optimistic novel about the life-changing power of books
There is an inexplicable comfort in reading a book that talks about books. It makes you travel down memory lane to revisit your journey as a reader and a book lover. You are gripped by a fuzzy familiarity and nostalgia. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop is a bibliophile’s delight and reaffirms the reader’s faith in the life-changing power of books. Originally published in Japanese, it won the Chiyoda Literary Prize in 2008 and was a commercial success. The book was later adapted into a film.
The female protagonist, Takako, is struggling with heartbreak. Her boyfriend’s betrayal has hit her hard. She has resigned from her workplace as they were in the same company. Trapped in an unfamiliar abyss of great pain, sleeping becomes a coping mechanism. But an unexpected phone call from Satoru, her long-lost uncle, changes the course of her life.
In the company of books
She isn’t particularly fond of him. He seems rather odd and eccentric to her. Nonetheless, she accepts his proposal to help him at his bookshop in Tokyo. This secondhand bookstore established by her great-grandfather eventually becomes her refuge. She buries herself in a damp room on the second floor that smells of used musty books. Her 25 years of life always struck her as just “adequate”, but Morisaki bookshop is where her “real life” begins in the company of about 6,000 used books.
The bookstore is situated in Jimbocho, which is famous for its secondhand bookshops that stand juxtaposed against bigger bookshop chains and large office buildings. The quaintness of this “wonderland of secondhand books” enchants her with a “subtle impact”. She gradually settles in the area that has her family legacy and has a historical connection with the bygone Taisho, Showa, and Meiji eras. Works of literary giants like Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Natsume Sōseki Soseki, Ogai Mori and others keep her riveted to the bookshop.
In fact, this novel can easily serve as an introductory source of Japanese literature to readers who are not unfamiliar with it. Interesting encounters with customers and neighbourhood residents also take a dig at modern society – how computer games and shallow mangas have overtaken the book-reading culture and made the book business unlucrative.
The circle of life
Even before she realises it, Takako’s life flutters forward into a zone of transition. She discovers the bibliophile in her, makes new friends, confronts her insecurities, and forges genuine human relationships. The circle of life manifests itself in the relationship Takako shares with Satoru. She learns about Satoru’s depressing teenage phase and how her birth led him to “a kind of epiphany” around that time. “Mystery of life” filled his heart with warmth and excitement to break out of his cage.
This revelation changes Takako’s feelings towards her uncle. It gives her the courage and inspiration to face her fear and step into the real world with an honest heart. Uncle and niece gradually build a solid bond, which becomes the source of Takako’s strength.
The book is a buoyant read, interspersed with thought-provoking life lessons. It is worthwhile to be reminded, “No matter where you go, or how many books you read, you still know nothing, you haven’t seen anything…like that Santoka Taneda poem, the one that goes, ‘On and on, in and in, and still the blue-green mountains.’”
Satoru is struggling with a personal loss as well. His wife Momoko left him without any apparent reason. The second part of the book deals with Momoko’s reappearance after five years. This subplot details the tenderness and fragility of human relationships. Takako’s maturity and sensitivity help the couple reunite. The novel manoeuvres through the unhappiness of life and the reader connects with universal human experiences in this immensely readable book. One can almost hear Tiger, the feline protagonist from another Japanese best seller Cat Who Saved Books remind us, “Books have tremendous power.”
Yagisawa’s debut novel evokes nostalgia by placing the fictional Morisaki Bookshop in Tokyo’s real-life book town “Jimbocho”. It is named after the samurai Jimbo Nagaharu who resided there in the 17th century. In the wake of the Meiji restoration of 1868, many universities opened in the vicinity of Jimbocho. This led to the proliferation of shops selling academic texts. Later with the mass production of “one yen books” that aimed at making books available to the Japanese public, several second-hand bookstores mushroomed in the area.
The books you read often open up little windows for some light to shine through. It makes you see the brighter side of life, and as Yagisawa reminds us of Motojiro’s Kajii’s words: “The act of seeing is no small thing. To see something is to be possessed by it. Sometimes it carries off a part of you, sometimes it’s your whole soul.”
Quotes
1. “Don’t be afraid to love someone. When you fall in love, I want you to fall in love all the way. Even if it ends in heartache, please don’t live a lonely life without love. I’ve been so worried that because of what happened you’ll give up on falling in love. Love is wonderful. I don’t want you to forget that. Those memories of people you love, they never disappear. They go on warming your heart as long as you live. When you get old like me, you’ll understand.”
2. “It’s funny. No matter where you go, or how many books you read, you still know nothing, you haven’t seen anything. And that’s life.”
3. “I don’t think it really matters whether you know a lot about books or not. That said, I don’t know that much myself. But I think what matters far more with a book is how it affects you.”
4. “in those days, I really was like a butterfly waiting patiently to come out of its chrysalis. As I turned page after page, I was waiting for my chance to take flight.”
5. “... maybe it takes a long time to figure out what you're truly searching for. Maybe you spend your whole life just to figure out a small part of it."
6. “I wanted to see the whole world for myself. I wanted to see the whole range of possibilities. Your life is yours. It doesn't belong to anyone else. I wanted to know what it would mean to live life on my own terms.”
7. “She and I have the same way of looking at things. It’s what brought us together, and I think it’s also the reason we split up. We met in the middle of the journey and we fell in love. But that doesn’t mean we’ll always be traveling together. At some point, everyone has to find their safe harbor. I’d always thought we’d make it to the end together. Unfortunately, that’s not how it turned out.”
8. “I had too many ideals and ambitions for one person, and because of that, I ended up without a single one I could hold on to.”
9. “The act of seeing is no small thing. To see something is to be possesses by it. Sometimes it carries off a part of you, sometimes it's your whole soul.' (Landscapes of the Heart by Motojiro Kajii)”
10. “Another time, I happened to find a pressed flower someone had left as a bookmark. As I inhaled the scent of the long-ago-faded flower, I wondered about the person who had put it there. Who in the world was she? When did she live? What was she feeling? It’s only in second-hand books that you can savour encounters like this, connections that transcend time.”
11. “Day by day, the leaves of the trees along the streets turned to gold. It delighted me to see how well the changing colours matched the slow transformation happening inside me.”
Professor (Dr.) M. L. Gulrajani F.S.D.C. (UK)
Former Professor and Dean (I.R&D), IIT Delhi
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