Over the years in this column, I have often talked about the pleasures of reading. I will do that again today – in particular, the pleasure of reading a book that unexpectedly delighted me.
I wouldn’t have thought a short novel (147 pages) written by a previously unknown-to-me Japanese author would have given me so much reading pleasure. I discovered this book via “bookstore serendipity,” which sometimes happens when I wander through a bookstore and suddenly see a book that seems to “speak” to me.
In my most recent serendipitous bookstore experience, a book spoke to me with its title, “Days at the Morisaki Bookshop.” It turned out to be a novel, written by Satoshi Yagisawa and translated by Eric Ozawa. When I read the back cover, I realized it was indeed about one of my favorite places, a bookstore (aka bookshop).
Moreover, the novel was about a bookstore that deals primarily in used books, as well as some new ones. I’m a sucker for used books, going back to my days in Chicago when I frequented places like the original Powell’s Books.
The bookshop in this novel is also an independent bookstore, not a part of a chain. I’m a sucker, too, for independent bookstores, going back to my days when my older sister Marianne introduced me to hospitable ones in the Chicago area.
I continue to be fascinated by independent bookstores today, since they go against the prevailing tide of bookstores, large and small, that closed during the past 10 to 20 years.
The prime example for me of a current surviving independent bookstore is Phoenix Books in Los Banos, which owner Joane Hoefer has kept alive and well for more than 40 years.
Recently, I was impressed by a new independent bookstore opening in downtown Gustine — Scribble, Scrawl & Smirch — by a woman named Marie, who fell in love with books and bookstores in second grade.
The Westside of Merced County now has more bookstores than the Eastside after the Barnes and Noble in Merced shut down.
The Morisaki Bookshop in the novel is closer to Joanne’s store than Marie’s (which deals primarily in new books). I have visited Joanne’s Phoenix Books many times over the past 40 years and have found a wide variety of primarily used books that spoke to me as I was rummaging around.
I couldn’t help but think of Joanne’s bookstore as I read the main character’s description of The Morisaki Bookshop, which, as she relates it, is “about thirty years old, but it looked like something from an earlier era. Through the glass doors of this little building, you could see books crammed together.” The character also describes the unique, pleasant “smell of old books.”
Inside the Morisaki Bookshop, books are crammed and piled every which way, so that customers have to go on “treasure hunts” through tight spaces in search of a book they might like.
Those descriptions sound a lot like Phoenix Books to me.
Another reason I was fascinated by the Morisaki Bookshop is that it’s located in a city thousands of miles from the Central Valley. It features books by Japanese authors I’ve never heard of and is located in a real-life area of Tokyo I’ve never heard of, Jimbocho, famous in Japan for its profusion of used bookstores.
As exotic as that may sound, I still felt quite at home in this fictional Japanese bookstore, as I do in actual American bookstores I’ve visited.
The characters in the novel, who are all Japanese, have names that are strange to me, but their personalities are similar to Americans I have known, especially people who work in or visit bookstores. As it turns out, I wasn’t in a strange, but rather in a familiar, territory.
The novel is narrated from the viewpoint of Takako, a young woman in her mid-20’s who has a charm and innocence about her as she encounters books and people. Her perspective, along with Yakisawa’s unadorned writing style, makes it a pleasant, meandering read, far from an action-packed mystery or science fiction novel.
For this, I’m grateful. In today’s hectic, stressful world, I need something that will calm me down, and “Days at the Morisaki Bookshop” did just that.
The characters Takako encounters are indeed “characters” — her uncle Satoru (a talkative fellow obsessed with running the bookshop), his wife Momoko (who had left him years ago and then re-enters his life midway in the novel), their friend Sabu (who loves to tease Takako), Takano (a shy guy working at the Saveur coffee shop who hovers over her) and eventually a polite young man named Wada (whom Takako comes to enjoy as a good friend).
Eric Ozawa , who faithfully translated Yakasawa’s novel into English, writes at the end of the book a note explaining why he enjoyed reading and translating it: “In the course of the story, Yakisawa catalogs the many pleasures of reading, the joy of discovering a new author and the freedom of walking into a bookstore and scanning the titled, waiting for something to catch your eye.”
The book has such a simple plot and is written in such a plain style that I wondered if I was overestimating it. But then I read that when it was published in 2009 it won a Japanese literature prize.
And as I read more about the book, I found that it has been translated into 15 different languages and sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide in the first few years after publication.
So I’m not alone in my admiration of it. In fact, I enjoyed “Days at the Morisaki Bookshop” so much that I purchased its sequel, “More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop,” with essentially the same characters encountering new experiences.
For the readers of this column who want adventure, excitement and continuous action, you won’t find any of that in “Days at the Morisaki Bookshop.” But if you like reading a book that will bring you joy, humor and even comfort, this novel is for you.
John Spevak’s email is john.spevak@gmail.com.
