Days At The Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

This light novel is about the love of books, friendships and finding your way.

It was an international bestseller and Chiyoda Literature Prize winner, written by a first time novelist. A hit Japanese movie (Morisaki shoten no hibi) was made in 2010.

Among the many distinct neighbourhoods of Tokyo, the Jimbocho area celebrates the love of reading, with around 170 new and used bookstores lining the streets. One for every genre including historical, scripts and plays, textbooks, old postcards and foreign literature. On a quiet back street corner, the Morisaki Bookshop has sat for generations. From late summer to next spring, Takako lived in a room on the second floor - how did this come to be?

One day the man she was dating exclaimed he was getting married. She did not know he was dating another woman. Listless, she receives a phone call from her Uncle Satoru, an unconventional relative she had rarely seen. He ran the Morisaki Bookshop after his father, and grandfather before him - it had been in the family for generations. There is a room upstairs, and perhaps she could help out in the store?

She takes him up on the offer and soon meets the characters who frequent the store. With over 6,000 used books, they specialize in modern Japanese literature - Ryonosuke Akutagawa, Soseki Natsume, Junichiro Tanizaki. She also learns about her Uncle, who in his youth backpacked the world, meeting his wife Momoko in Paris. She has recently left him, leaving him a note.

The area is peppered with coffee shops, their favourite is Saveur, where the chef Takano reads Faulkner, Updike, and Capote, and has his eye on the waitress, Tomo. Another regular customer is Wada, the type of man who reads his favourite book five times over, whom Takako befriends and starts dating.

Takako is soon smitten with the reading bug and "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 of me all this time, and then it suddenly sprang to life".

Aunt Momoko suddenly returns. Affectionate and a good cook, she fits seamlessly back into their lives, and by this time, we know them well enough to hear the real reason she left, and why she has returned.

This is filled with heartfelt relationships. Her Uncle helps her rest her anger towards her ex-boyfriend, and Momoko and Takako stay at an Inn near a famous mountaintop shrine. At times it can become over-charming, but there is enough about the act of reading and the love of authors that balances it out. This is a simple story that people who love books will enjoy. At one point, Takako sees someone has written in a book, and knowing they felt moved to underline the passage, feels connected to that stranger. We readers can relate.

Takako grows over this period and even leaves to another job - after all, reading all day surrounded by books is no way of life - or, is it? Perhaps the answer is in the 2011 sequel written by Yagisawa, "More Days At The Morisaki Bookshop", my next book review.

2009 / Tradeback / 160 pages