Heal Your Weary Soul at the Morisaki Bookshop

I skipped the reservation queue again, and NLB/Libby granted me a 7-day limit to read Satoshi Yagisawa's 'Days at the Morisaki Bookshop' (published in Japanese in 2008). SURE! 

Translated by Eric Ozawa and published in English in July 2023, it's a familiar story of books, bit of romance and lots of love and happiness. It's a happy little read of which I didn't mind too much. (Review here, here, here and here.)

It wasn't too cloying. Sure, Although the story started because of 25-year-old protagonist Takako's heartbreak and wanting to get away from it all, the romance is pretty downplayed. The story's strength is in the relationship between the narrator and the people she meets, and ultimately finding herself and her purpose in life. By the end of the book, I felt almost very proud of Takako's growth and the woman she has become. LOL

Set in Jimbōchō in Chiyoda, which is quite a hub for publishing houses and used book stores in Tokyo, the fictional Morisaki Bookshop is family-run and focused on re-selling books by contemporary Japanese writers from the late 19th century onwards. The story mentioned the Kanda Used Book Festival — this festival exists since 1960 and the 63rd edition will be held this year from 27 October to 3 November. 

The fictional Morisaki Bookshop is owned by Takako's uncle Satoru. He ran it with his wife Momoko until she left him for five years, and then she returned and they ran it together again. In Takako's memories as a young adult, she didn't feel close to this uncle or his wife, and didn't quite understand why he made her such a kind offer. She never bothered about books or reading. She was hurt and preoccupied with her thoughts and the past life and well, useless cheater of the ex-boyfriend. But once she came here, she got into reading.

It was as if, without realising it, I had opened a door I had never known existed. That's exactly what it felt like. 

From that moment on, I read relentlessly, one book after another. It was as if a love of reading had been sleeping somewhere deep inside me all this time, and then it suddenly sprang to life.

I read slowly, savouring each book one by one. I had all the time in the world then. And there was non danger I'd run out of books, no matter how much I read.

Kafū Nagai, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Osamu Dazai, Haruo Satō, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Kōji Uno... I read them voraciously, the authors whose names I knew but hadn't read, the ones whose names I'd never even heard of, any book that seemed interesting. And yet for all I read, I found book after book that I still wanted to read.

I'd never experienced anything like this before. It made me feel like I had been wasting my life until this moment.

I decided to stop sleeping all the time. It no longer seemed necessary. Instead of taking refuge in sleep after my uncle took over for me at the bookshop, I went to my room or to a cafe to read.

Takako grew stronger, got her confidence back, and become more self-assured. From being a loner in her previous sad office job, she found friends and created a social network that she was comfortable with. 

She established solid relationships with her uncle Satoru, her aunt Momoko, and the shop's regular patrons, as well as fellow workers on the street and such. It was only then she decided that it was time to leave Morisaki Bookshop and go back to a full-time job. But with that, she didn't forget the relationships built. 

I finished this book in an hour, but I returned back to check out some passages. So I took about 1.5 hours in total to get through it. Somehow, or rather it's not unexpected, I retained the names of the authors and books mentioned in here. I can't remember them all; I wrote it down lah. I might go hunt for them and have a read, in Japanese. I don't know much about Japanese writers, and if these are classics, I should take a peek.

If my heart is hurt and my soul is weary, I wouldn't mind having this type of refuge if I'm running away from the world. Free board and lodging, work at the bookstore and read books. It sounds absolutely perfect, isn't it? That's on the premise that I have no mad mortgages or insurance premiums to settle, and my bank account has sufficient funds to tide me through for a few years while I heal and work for peanuts. Pfffft.

For example, on a page of Motojirō Kajii's Landscapes of the Heart, I came across this passage: 

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.

At some point in the past, someone reading this book had felt moved to take a pen and draw aline under these words. It made me happy to think that because I had been moved by that same passage too, I was now connected to that stranger.

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 secondhand books that you can savour encounters like this, connections that transcend time. And that's how I learned to love the secondhand bookstore that handled these books, our Morisaki Bookshop. I realized how precious a chance I'd been given, to be part of that little place, where you can feel the quiet flow of time.