[book] Days at the Morisaki Bookshop

In a word, this book is heartfelt.

I’ve had my eye on this book for a few months now after seeing it in one book shop or another, and I grabbed it when I saw a copy in the library the other week. It’s a quick one, and easy to miss in the stacks, at right around 150 pages. But pound for pound, this novel is as touching as they come.

Written by Satoshi Yagisawa and translated by Eric Ozawa, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop brings you into young twenty-something Takako’s life turmoil as she comes to find her boyfriend of years has casually been cheating on her, and she is the other girl in his life. Since they work at the same place, she shortly cannot stand to be at her job anymore and falls into a state of helplessness sleeping her life away depressed in her apartment when her uncle Saturo calls. He invites her to move into the apartment above his secondhand bookshop in Jimbocho, Tokyo’s book district, and help him with the shop.

Although begrudgingly, Takako comes to enjoy and love the eclectic bookshop and neighborhood as she reconnects with her unconventional uncle. This book is part an ode to a simple life without ladder climbing and hustling, and in part a love letter to new beginnings and starting over again. Through Takako’s narration we’re shown how sometimes it takes someone in your corner rooting for you and fighting for you for you to see that its worth standing up for yourself once again, even when you’ve been through it. In a word, this book is heartfelt. I would pick it up again and again.

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. I was an empty person. That’s what I was. It seemed like there was absolutely nowhere I belonged in the world. (p. 49)

I had never heard of Jimbocho before picking up Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, but now I can’t get it out of my head and feel a craving for such a place where life might move a little slower, but picking up a book or bumping into a friend are constants. It reminds me of recent conversations I’ve had with friends about how disappointing media has been lately, even though there is more of it at our fingertips than ever before. I’m wishing for a bit of boredom instead of constant scrolling, or media that wasn’t made for an algorithm but rather for people. As depicted throughout the novel, Jimbocho seems like a place where this happens, and that sounds so so refreshing for my ever shortening attention span.

“There’s one thing I want you to promise me,” he said first as a preamble. Then he said, “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. How about it — can you promise me?”

“I get it. I promise,” I said. “I think this place taught me that. So you don’t have to worry.”

“In that case, you’ll ne alright now matter where you go.”

“Thank you, Uncle.” (p. 65)

If so, tell me what you thought in the comments!