Days at the Morisaki Bookshop: A charming and uplifting Japanese translated story on the healing power of books

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Eso es lo que la premisa de este título nos avanza en su contraportada, otra cosa es lo que los lectores encontraremos. No os engañaré, esta lectura ha sido la peor que he tenido en los últimos meses. Algo que obviamente no esperaba, ya que a pesar de saber que no iba a ser un libro inolvidable tenía el convencimiento de que encontraría una historia “feel good”, algo agradable y ligero para disfrutar.

At some point in the past, someone reading this book had felt moved to take a pen and draw a line 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. The highlight of Carl's narrowly circumscribed life is to deliver books every evening to a handful of shut-in customers. The selections are dictated by their stated preferences — for happy endings, tragedy, philosophical works and so on. Trouble ensues when a preternaturally wise (and cloying) motherless 9-year-old girl tags along with him on his rounds. She decides Carl is not actually giving his customers what they really need, and hatches a plot to correct this.Satoru has been regarded as a little odd by his conventional family. He met the love of his life, Momoko, while travelling in Paris, and she fell in love with this man whose family owned a Japanese book store yet felt the need to haunt Parisian bookstores while supposedly escaping the family business. None of this would have been possible but for the supportive presence of Uncle Saturo. He not only gives practical support, urging her to view the shop as a harbour, but passes on lessons he learned from travelling the world as a young man. it took him years to decide what he wanted from life, he tells Takako, now it’s time for her to start figuring that out for herself. After takakos boyfriend breaks up with her in the most devastating way and her life gets thrown into turmoil she gets offered the chance of a lifetime by her uncle and decides to move above the family bookshop rent-free to work out what she wants to do next in life. (Why was I never given this option 🤣) Days at the Morisaki Bookshop is a short, slice of life fiction book by Satoshi Yagisawa, which has been translated into English by Eric Ozawa.

In the interim she takes a short journey up into the hills above Tokyo for some hiking, with someone from her past. A young woman goes to work in a used bookstore in this comforting tale about growing old and settling down.Whilst staying there she discovers the worlds that books can transport her to and falls in love with reading along with discovering the world that her little bookshop inhabits. Having been unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend, Takako leaves her job in the city and moves into her Uncle Satoru’s used book store. Here, she takes time to pause and gather her strength before embarking on the next stage of her life. When she arrives at the book store, Takako finds that her uncle is also dealing with some pretty difficult things. His wife left without saying a word and Satoru is occupied trying to find a way to keep the book store, and himself, going. I was drawn to this story initially because of the bookish premise. After twenty five year old Takako loses her boyfriend and her job in the span of a day, she has nowhere else to turn — so when her uncle Satoru invites her to stay in a room above his Morisaki bookshop in exchange for helping him watch the shop several hours a day, Takako agrees, even though she has never been a reader and has no interest in books. When she arrives at the location of her family’s bookshop in Jimbocho, she finds that the area is actually a book lover’s paradise where “everywhere you turned, there was another bookshop.” At the Morisaki bookshop, Takako is (literally) surrounded by books day and night — not surprisingly, she also encounters various people who love to read. Pretty soon, Takako experiences for herself the healing power of books, but more significantly, her stay at the bookshop ends up changing her life in ways she never thought possible.

Yagisawa’s prose is clean and direct even as he describes the Morisaki Bookshop and the city that surrounds it with extraordinary care and detail. The characters are also compelling, but it is really the setting and the atmosphere that stand out in this novel. Readers will want to linger in this world. They will want more when this concise tale ends." — Booklist As the novel progresses, we discover how these twin souls married, were blissfully happy, and then came apart at the seams when faced by a terrible medical event. Takako, who has been quiet and conventional her whole life, finds herself an unlikely confidante for both her aunt and her uncle. Even though we think of it as an independent business, what matters in the industry more than anything are the relationships you have with people. I guess that’s probably true of the world in general,” he said, looking rather pleased with himself. The unadorned simplicity of Takako's voice is anything but subtle, but it's somehow winning in its guilelessness . . . . Days at the Morisaki Bookshopdraws a strong connection between the empathy unleashed by great literature and Takako's growing sense of self-confidence and well-being." — NPRThe story of Takako, a 25-year-old woman, struggling with love, work, and self. The story truly begins when she moves into her uncle's second hand bookshop, discovers the joy of reading, and meets a cast of characters that help her recover her emotional balance, and fall in love with life once again. Each character is interesting, but perhaps most interesting are the uncle, Satoru, and his wife, Momoko, who are brimming with life, energy, and yearning. I loved both the universality and the specificity of this story. Having experienced something very similar to Momoko, I can feel her pain, and could only wish my husband had loved me as well as Saturo loved her. However, I enjoyed just as much the very Japanese aspects of her experience - the Shinto beliefs and culture we see through the way her tale unfolds. The story showed us the daily routine and what happened in the bookshop, Takako was the center character. All the characters were extraordinarily likable. Auntie Momoko was so real and like a mother. I especially liked the scene Momoko and Takako spending time together to talk. This scene was touching. To her uncle's delight, Takako, a nonreader, 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 favorite 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.

Sutil como la ceremonia del té, hermosa como los cerezos en flor y melancólica como el cine de autor japonés, así es la novela corta Mis días en la librería Morisaki de Satoshi Yagisawa que ha conquistado el corazón de lectores bibliófilos a lo largo y ancho de todo el mundo y que, con traducción de Estefanía Asins, acaba de ser editada en España por Plata Editores, un nuevo sello que promete darnos muchas alegrías lectoras. Mis días en la librería Morisaki hará las delicias del público japonófilo. Entre sus páginas se nos narra el día a día de un rincón oculto de esa inabarcable urbe, pero también se nos desmenuzan distintas formas de vivir y sentir en el Tokio de hoy en día. Cada uno de los curiosos personajes con los que confraterniza la tímida Tatako representa una forma de ser distinta que encapsula al propio Japón: su melancólico tío, su extravagante tía, los chismosos chicos del café, el hierático cliente habitual… constituyen un mosaico que nos habla de una sociedad compleja, contradictoria, en constante evolución. 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. Readers do not know much about Takako’s life outside these two stretches of time spent in Jimbocho, and the implication is that they need not concern themselves with these.Exacto! En el barrio de Jimbocho, considerada como la ciudad de los libros más grande del mundo🤩. Es más, su nombre ya lo dice todo: "Podemos seguir así todo el día"! Así que, imagínate un libro ambientado en este barrio, que habla de libros y que además pasa en una librería ! Vamos, si esto ya no es tentar al publico, que venga santa Cachucha y nos lo explique...🤭 I recommend this book if you enjoy Japanese literature and have liked any of the novels I mentioned at the beginning. I'll keep an eye out for this author in the future. 4.5 stars. This book is also COSY. It is a flowing, beautiful prose following these characters without anything too intense or dramatic, which I wanted and needed. Even the most dramatic scenes - Satoru taking Takako to her ex-boyfriend's house to get him to apologise, for example, is written in a languid, humorous, and easygoing manner.