Goodbye Kinokuniya Liang Court!

Kinokuniya at Liang Court has ceased operations after 35 years and 4 months. 🥺😔☹️ It would have been its 36th anniversary at the end of 2019. The bookstore opened in December 1983. In 1984, I had entered Primary One and was reading and writing in three and a half languages, so both my grandmothers happily took me to Kinokuniya Liang Court every week. They would park me at the bookstore while they did groceries, and I would be rewarded with a purchased book after that.

I literally grew up with the bookstore at this location. It's my favorite outlet because it’s quieter and it has remained convenient to my schedule to still stop by once a week. Sure, I could get my hardcopy books elsewhere, likely from its main store in Ngee Ann City, but I really dislike going through that mall. I'll miss this outlet at Liang Court. Sigh. It is time, I suppose. Liang Court as a mall is outdated and it's really old. It's time for a complete facelift. Who hasn't scratched their cars going down and coming up that stupid narrow driveway to the basement carpark with all those awkward corners?

On my last visit over the weekend, I picked up a collection of nine short stories by Shinji Ishii- 短篇集「海と山のピアノ」2016、いしい しんじ (著). The title kinda translates into 'The Piano of the Sea and the Mountain'. The whimsical cover illustration doesn't prepare me for the tough topics addressed within. All the stories seem like fairytales, with the theme of water running through. Myths of the sea, so to speak. A review said, 「その意味で本書は海との関係を結びなおすためのいま語りの神話集なのである。」

The eponymous title story is set loosely in Shikoku (四国), telling of a girl who lives with her grand piano and sleeps in it. 表題作「海と山のピアノ」では、山の津波を描く。Three women in this town were taken by a tsunami that came to the mountains. It spoke of how the girl and her piano saved the town, but got swept out to the sea and she was never seen again. This is the legend of how Shikoku flows out to the sea; with its huge black and white trees lined up along the shoreline, it looks like a huge piano keyboard.

It seems as though the stories drew on the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Among others, there're 「海賊のうた」、「川の棺」、「ルル」、「あたらしい熊」. One story details a dog named Lulu's perspective of a tsunami, but at the end of the story, I was left a little confused if the dog exists, or it's a figment of the children's imagination. In 「あたらしい熊」, through a bear on the Aomori coast, it seems to indirectly criticize the pollution to the land caused by US military bases and nuclear plants, and the terrible costs of radiation poisoning.

意外なことに誰よりも先に、パーカーの女が気づき葦のあいだをくぐるうなぎ熊のように、するすると身をくねらせて相手に近づいていった。気の多い母親からはぐいれてしまったみたいな、頬を紅潮させ、行きかうひとびと影にそっと身をひそめたら少女である。ふたごと僕とは雑踏をいったりきたりしながら、女が声をかけ、少女あを道の隅にいざない、しゃがみこんでことばをかわす様子をちらちらと眺めた。

It's fairly philosophical, imho. I finished the book with many questions gently swirling in my head. Many of these questions revolve around asking myself what life is, and what it means to live, with happiness, and how to live in harmony and balance with our natural environment. 「いのち」を問う一冊だった。An extract from 「海賊のうた」nicely sums up what we humans are doing every day, simply keeping afloat.

「正気？　そんなもの、いったい、この世のどこにあるだろうか」船長はおだやかな調子でつづけた。「みんな懸命に、自分の手で泳いでるつもりで、実際は、波と波のあいだで、まわりがみえたりみえなかったりしつつ、ぷかぷか浮かんでるだけかもしれないのに」