The Nakano Thrift Shop

I was a bit like, is it one of those feel-good books again? There's been a lot of these books translated and flying around the recommended lists. I read it anyway. I took some time to finish it because this isn't that sort of book I can't put down. I'm not invested in the characters or their stories. At least this thrift shop isn't a portal to anywhere in time, and doesn't sell books. Hahaha.

This is Hiromi Kawakami's 'The Nakano Thrift Shop' (originally published in 2005) / 『古道具 中野商店』 川上弘美. It's translated to English by Allison Markin Powell and that edition was published in 2017. (Reviews here, here, here and here.)

There is the owner of the thrift shop forty-something-years-old Mr Haruo Nakano. His line is, 'I don't sell antiques, these are second-hand items'. There is the twenty-something introverted Takeo, an assistant who also takes on the role of driver and collector, and we have the protagonist Hitomi Suganuma. We also see Mr Nakano's elder sister Masayo who is in her fifties and is an artist.

The introduction set the tone and the background and all, but it was meandering for the first 50 pages. There's an item flagged in each chapter of the story, and those become 12 little short stories — old photographs, a pair of paperweights, a bribe, a letter opener, a bus, a bowl, apples, a dress and a sewing machine, et cetera. 

In 'Gin', Mr Nakano bidded 70,000 yen for a jug, which was really a bottle of gin. That was the chapter when Mr Nakano's mistress Sakiko was ready to quit him, and Hitomi herself was thinking of quitting the thrift shop. In this chapter, Mr Nakano announced that he would close the shop.

He wanted to make a slight change in the kind of merchandise he carried. And to do so required money. He would temporarily lease the storefront to someone else, and for the time being he would only be doing business on Tokyo's website. He wasn't able to pay severance, but he would give us the month's wages plus a fifty per cent premium.

Mr Nakano had lost a little more weight since the beginning of the month. The other day I heard from Masayo that Sakiko had told him she wanted to make a clean break. It seemed to me that everyone—men and women, old and young—loses weight when a love affair is over. I have wondered about this. 

This is the kind of shop that seems insulated from the corporate glitz of downtown Tokyo, where people die from overworking. The shop's boss and employees feel like a family instead of just being co-workers. As it is with every business, this thrift shop would be forced to modernize and go onto a digital e-commerce model.

There's this thing about the desire for intimacy, and the anxiety of it, a thing about commitment and the fear of it. We see Mr Nakano with a string of ex-wives and his secrecy about current dates and girlfriends, and Masayo's need for intimacy with someone who is younger, but she doesn't want any commitment. There's this awkward hint about romance between Hitomi and Takeo. Then each chapter becomes a thing about Hitomi wondering about Takeo's lack of interest or response.  

This novel is narrated in first person by Hitomi, which is rather annoying. We hear both her inner voice and her social thoughts. The stories are also really long-winded. I ended up more interested in what these people had for dinner at the end of the day. LOL There were soba, katsu-don, and tan-men.

The final chapter and story is titled 'Punch Ball'. It has been almost three years since the thrift shop closed and Hitomi moved to another town. Hitomi was a contract worker with a health food company in Shiba six months, and she now started with a computer company as an administrative assistant. Hitomi went back to bookkeeping school. She also meets Masayo for a chat over drinks. She hasn't seen Takeo at all. Until this new job.

Hitomi literally ran into Takeo in the hallway. He had gone to technical school and is now a web designer with this computer company. They remained as friends and went out for dinner twice. Takeo goes to the gym now, and his favorite equipment is the punch ball. "It's a ball you punch, it flies out and then springs back, like that." Ohhhh. That's how it links to this title. This little line used by the author explained all the changes in the characters.

Then Mr Nakano opened up a new shop named simply as 'Nakano'. He managed to get some profits from his online shop and got a new loan, and he has leased this shopfront in Nishiogi to open a Western antique shop. They had a little reunion at the shop's grand opening. At the end, they stayed on for wine. Haruo Nakano, Masayo, Takeo and Hitomi. It seemed just like the old days, but everything felt so different now.

The Nakano shop is gone now, I said. Everyone nodded in agreement.

But the Nakano shop lives on forever, Mr Nakano muttered as he stood up. As if that were a sign, the four of us all started chattering, nobody sure what anyone else was saying. Completely bewildered, I looked at Taeko again; he was still staring at me.

Just then, for the first time, I truly felt love for Takeo. The thought inexplicably appeared in a corner of my mind.

The newly opened bottle of wine clinked against the rim of my teacup, sounding a clear ring.