Category Archives: Books

Getting away


Picture book review, from Tokyo – It’s the start of the Golden Week holidays in Japan when the entire white-collar working population (and some more) go on vacation. I popped by my local library to find what they had picked for children, and found a picture of a family of capybaras set among some long grass, somewhat near their home. Were they on vacation?

Translated by Makiko Amino as 『カピバラがやってきた』(Kapibara ga yattekita, lit. Here come the capybaras), the title gave little away, but Alfredo Soderguit’s capybaras did not convey the laid back, relaxed atmosphere that these animals normally look when they warm themselves in baths during winter. Eyes wide open. Huddled together and facing outward. They looked very afraid and alert to some unsighted danger.

The book starts off with life on a chicken farm. Chicken life is comfortable. There’s plenty of feed. Things are quiet and low stress. Except when the farmer to pick some chickens, of course.

One fine day, the family of capybaras arrive. The chickens try to chase them away. But when the rodent family stays without explaining much else, the chickens set rules that must be obeyed. No questions asked! The capybaras are told to stay in the water, far far away from the chickens’ feed. When a baby capybara ventures on land and befriends a chick, the chickens make a racket! The capybaras are wild animals! And you’ll never know what they’ll do!

And the capybaras do just that. They scare off a hunting dog from the chick and their baby, and the chickens let them come on land. The chickens teach them their way of life and even let them sleep in their barn.

After the end of the hunting season, the capybaras return to their home. But they still drop by to visit, and eventually… the chickens make their getaway on the backs of the capybaras to a sheep farm elsewhere on the banks of the lake.

Award winning Alfredo Soderguit needs no introduction, and this story needs no explanation. Outsiders seeking temporary refuge. Trusting others and learning to live together.

But there seems to be another underlying current. Getting away from conflict and danger offers temporary respite. The chickens sought a long-term solution – they left their apparently comfortable but perilous dwelling (you never know who’s next!).

I took a while to settle on the title for this post. But when I did, many questions surfaced in my head. Why do we need to get away? Perhaps there’s some monster? Chores? Work? Stress? KPIs?

Returning to the topic of getting away, when we humans make our temporary escape, we do so on our rules. Just recently, vacationers in Japan had reportedly come close to hitting wild boars that were rushing across the road. Wild animals have been sighted more often in built-up areas as human activity has receded, but with people now ready to move en masse across large swathes of the country, are we even aware of those unwritten rules and practices in the natural environment? Do we understand them well enough or even at all? Are we living well together with the rest of the planet? Is there a long-term alternative to our way of life today?

The capybaras made the chickens realize that there could be a better solution. If we learn to live with others and our environment, maybe we will too.

*Review based on the Japanese translation.

『カピバラがやってきた』(Kapibara ga yattekita, lit. Here come the capybaras) translation by Makiko Amino of the original Los carpinchos by Alfredo Soderguit
Publisher: Iwasaki Shoten, 2022

Another shade of night


Picture book review, from Tokyo – February traditionally signals the start of spring in Japan, when imaginary demons or oni (or dads donning paper demon masks) are pelted with roasted soya beans and driven out of the home in the annual mame-maki bean-throwing ritual at setsubun, the turn of the season in the calendar. Even so, after the sun sets, temperatures drop. That nighttime has grown shorter since the end of the Winter Solstice is scant consolation, and nights remain a time to seek shelter from the cold outside. The darkness of this time of the day might seem scary and daunting for some, while to others it might be just quiet and peaceful.

To Milly’s black cat Yoru in Masumi Asano’s 『ヨルとよる』(Yoru to yoru, lit. Yoru and the night), the night is the latter. Yoru’s eyes, round and bright eyes like the moon, peer out from his dark face. It is no wonder Milly named him Yoru, which means night in Japanese. But to the cat, even the moon was a complete stranger. Having not ventured out of the house at all, Yoru always thought that nighttime was always like that – humans slept, and all was peaceful and serene.

Until one day, when the tabby helped a mouse come unstuck from a crack in the outside wall. Initially wary of the cat’s motives, it was eager to repay the favour quickly, not that Yoru seemed the slightest bit likely to ask for something more in tune to its nature. Latching on to what Yoru thought of the night, the mouse offered to show him the colourful, exciting, and yummy side of it!

And so that night the mouse returned to take Yoru outside. Under the light of the moon, the two set off on their little jaunt into town. They were greeted by the sights and sounds of people dining in brightly lit cafes and restaurants filled with chatter and activity. When the smell of piping hotdogs wafted down their way, the mouse suggested for Yoru to buy one to share, and handed him a coin and a hat to hide his feline face.

Just as the hotdog was served, the wind lifted the hat away! The mouse shuddered at memories of stories of what happened if a human were to catch it! The person manning the hotdog stand was not only surprised by the pair, but was also kind enough to give them one each to fill their stomachs before sending them on their way back to Yoru’s home.

The story made me recall how excited I was as a child at any chance to go out at night with family. Whether it was to the flower market during Lunar New Year, a drive through the streets to catch the Christmas light-up, or a bite at a bustling hawker center to satisfy those late night cravings. While I saw that nighttime was more than just sleep and tranquil, I was also forewarned of staying close and avoiding the dangers that might lurk in the shadows. And when we returned home, the exhilaration of the adventure would fade and sleep would overcome me.

The book seemed to mirror this thought process – from curiosity to excitement mixed with a hint of fear before calm. Beyond that, this story of a cat and a mouse befriending each other suggests that getting to know someone would lead to new revelations. The mouse realizes that Yoru is kind (and warm), and the two learn that not all humans are scary. If Yoru didn’t reach out to help the mouse in the first place, he would not have seen the bright, colourful, yummy side of nighttime, albeit of urban life.

More than just a tale of different views of nighttime, it read like a simple story of adventure – of stepping out into the unknown and returning with new perspectives and a new friend.

Title:  『ヨルとよる』(Yoru to yoru, lit. Yoru and the night) by Masumi Asano, illustrated by Megu Yoshimura
Publisher: Kyouikugageki, 2022

The littlest country


Book review, from Tokyo – A couple of months back, I chanced upon this picture book by the late David McKee translated into Japanese. I felt it was what I needed to read then, a time when tensions everywhere seemed to just escalate. And today I flip it open again, feeling very much same.

Translated by Chihiro Nakagawa into 『せかいでいちばんつよい国』(Sekai de ichiban tsuyoi kuni, lit. The world’s most powerful country) McKee’s The Conquerors (2004) tells a story of the President (“General” in the original) of the most powerful country who waged war on the rest of the world so that they could all live “happily in harmony”.

One by one, countries fell to the world’s largest and most powerful army. Until there was just tiny one. The littlest country. But to leave it unconquered did not sit well with the president. And so he sent an army to conquer it. When they arrived, the people welcomed into their homes! The president even got the largest house in the country, where he wrote home to his wife and son to pass the time.

With nothing to conquer, the soldiers spent their time chatting with the people, playing their games, hearing their stories, laughing to their jokes, learning their songs. But when they started helping out, the emperor sent them home and called for a fresh group of disciplined soldiers. But when these soldiers also grew lax, the emperor headed home, leaving a small contingent behind. As soon as the emperor left, these soldiers quickly changed into their civilian wear to lead normal lives.

The president led a homecoming victory parade on his homecoming, but when his son asked him to sing at bedtime, he sang a song from the littlest country.

It was interesting to see this comical president garbed like Napoleon I in contrast with the French emperor as various versions of Genzaburo Yoshino’s 『君たちはどう生きるか』(translated into English How Do You Live? by Bruno Navasky) was enjoying a sustained resurgence in Japan at the time.

This funny, simple story of war and conquest with underlying messages of inclusiveness and pacifism left me hoping that if only the powerful and more of us were a bit more like that littlest country, the world might be that bit more open and peaceful.

*Review based on the Japanese translation.

Title: 『せかいでいちばんつよい国』(Sekai de ichiban tsuyoi kuni, lit. The world’s most powerful country) translation by Chihiro Nakagawa, original by David McKee
Publisher: Mitsumura Educational Co., Ltd., 2005

From a 2x1m room


Book review, from Tokyo – This story began in a room. A private room in a hospital in Sapporo, Hokkaido. Mion Maeda, then a Primary 3 child, was warded again for tests and treatment for focal cortical dysplasia. This was another of her frequent but short-term stays since she was diagnosed with this neurodevelopmental condition when she was three. One day, as she rolled under the overbed table, she discovered messages scribbled on to its underside. Messages from children like herself who had been in that same 2×1 room. She felt the urge to write an essay despite her condition affecting her writing hand. The essay won the unanimous vote of the judges panel for the top prize for the 2020 Children’s Non-fiction Literature Contest held by Kita-Kyushu City. It also caught the eye of publishers Shogakukan, who reached out to her and brought in well-loved illustrator Koshiro Hata to work with her to create 『二平方メートルの世界で』(Niheihou meetoru no sekai de, lit. In a 2m2 world).

The book opens with a view of Sapporo’s famed main street to set the scene for the essay, which starts,

My name is Mion Maeda. I am a P3 student from Hokkaido.
The bed in my hospital room is about 2m long and 1m wide.
A curtain goes right round the bed.
When I’m here, this is my world.
A place where I do everything – sleep, eat, play and study.

When she speaks of her family and her feelings, Maeda’s words hit home. Direct and unvarnished. Loneliness. From nuclear medicine diagnosis, where she and her mother have to be stay apart for an hour.
Fear. From the flurry of footsteps during the night shift that makes her think if she no longer has much time left to wonder what if, how come, or why.

It just happened to be me.

Who cannot move around too much before her tests. Who has to fast. Who has only rice, miso soup and onion slices for breakfast. Who is told she shouldn’t go on excursions because of her condition. Who just hates it all. Who wishes for just one day when she didn’t need to take medication. Who swallows those words before they are uttered. But who also knows that if she did, it would hurt everyone who is doing their best to help.

And so I keep it in.

One day, as she waited for her test, she rolled under her overbed table and found the scribblings of children like herself.

Yeah! I’m discharging tomorrow! 16 months is way too long!
Hooray! Congrats!

Keep on fighting!

I want eat everything!
Even natto!

Reop sucks!!
Fight!

I want to be healthy

Sorry for all the trouble mom

Hidden from sight were words from children who stayed there before her.
Children who also fought their own fight.
They spoke to her. And she knew she was not alone.

Someone once said to me, “You were chosen because you can overcome this.”
Don’t choose me.

She chose to share her story. Of her struggles in hospital.
Of finding those words. Of savoring each and every moment of her life.
To put it into words her realization of how wonderful it is to be alive.
For the chance to live the way only she can.

Sometimes solemn. Sometimes miserable.
A 9 year-old’s very real essay on life and her struggles that holds much for anyone to reflect on.
Ill or not.

Title: 『二平方メートルの世界で』(Niheihou meetoru no sekai de, lit. In a 2m2 world) text by Mion Maeda, illustrations by Koshiro Hata
Publisher: Shogakukan Inc., 2021

STV Video feature (in Japanese) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBvE0iI2b3k

A story about a little sister


Book review, from Tokyo – A lone girl in a blue dress stands barefoot with her hands crossed behind her back. A doll in a similar attire lies face up beside her. A hand outstretched. When I saw the cover, I was drawn to the title, 『わたしのいもうと』 (Watashi no Imouto, lit. My little sister), thinking that it would have been a story about a little sister. Well, it was.

Keiko Ajito’s characteristic darkish, wispy lines on the cover sowed the seeds for the atmosphere of the story of a little sister’s suicide rooted in bullying. Only once throughout the entire book, do we see a page in lighter tones. Cheerful, faint, wistful, like a distant memory. From seven years ago. When the family moved to a new town. The little sister was then in Primary 4.

Miyoko Matsutani tells us that they spoke an unfamiliar accent. In school, the little girl was picked on for her shortcomings and her differences. She dished out lunch in class, but that was refused. In the end, no one even spoke to her. She ended up staying home, alone in her room, unable to eat, rescued from the brink only by her mother’s care and companionship. That fragile relief seemingly broken by the joyful voices of her classmates making their way to secondary school.

All this while we see her sorrow, loneliness, and isolation in dark pages. Crying in the playground with a lone withering flower. Sitting apart from her doll. Curtains drawn with a lone light inside. Ever since the bullying began, we almost only ever see the girl’s back, as if she had turned her back on the entire world.

The silent girl took to folding paper cranes. Endlessly until she was buried in them. Her mother folded paper cranes to try to understand what her daughter was feeling. Then one day, she was gone, leaving behind a short letter.

The kids that bullied me have probably forgotten about me.
I wanted to play with friends. I wanted to study.

In her end notes, Matsutani reveals that this book is based on a letter she received from the sibling. She warns us to remember that guileless actions and words can cause pain and suffering to others, and also offers advice to accept our differences to avoid friction and conflict, and notes how this is by extension the key to tolerance and peace.

In school, we had our nicknames. I did call others by their nicknames too. Some had less pleasing nuances, others were plainly repulsive. But never once did I feel that alone or isolated. However much one was targeted, we all had our groups to return to. Perhaps it was down to the acceptance of our differences that had been ingrained in a multi-cultural environment or the ambiguities of our own identities or vindications. Or our curiosity of those things that make us view others as different, that allow us to reach out, grab that extended hand, and pull it back from the edge.

I can see how bullying of an “other” thrown into a group can easily escalate when the group defines itself based on its specific differences from others and takes much pride in its exclusivity, such as in distinct national or cultural identities. But when its members start asserting themselves and recognizing the diversity within the group, it can and will evolve into a more inclusive and comfortable one for everyone. And perhaps then such a tragedy can be avoided.

Title: 『わたしのいもうと』 (Watashi no Imouto, lit. My little sister) text by Miyoko Matsutani, illustrated by Keiko Ajito
Publisher: Kaisei-sha Ltd., 1987

Systems of our own making


Book review, from Tokyo – Our modern society is a web of systems. Communications networks, law and enforcement, finance and payments, sewage, gas, electricity. Modern human society runs on these. Alliances, ideologies, capitalism, and the different political systems are also of our own making. But not everyone goes by the same rules. If someone made them, then someone else can change them. But when only one person makes all the decisions, it is called a dictatorship.

Translated by Lawrence Schimel into English based on Equipo Plantel’s Spanish title first published in 1977, This is a Dictatorship (Book Island, 2021) reminds us that there are those who rule with an iron fist today, inciting fear and terror. Mikel Casal’s blocky bold illustrations for the 2015 version portray a beady-eyed, moustached, bald dictator who calls all the shots in his country. (For more on the illustrations, read this interview on Picturebook Makers.) The few people close to him grow wealthier for their pretenses while the masses stay poor, discontented and silent for fear of persecution. We are told that dictatorships end with the death of the tyrant or when he is kicked out by the masses. This we know does not happen if there is succession nor will it be a peaceful transition in the latter situation.

Using a limited colour palette, Casal’s pictures seem to transport the reader back a few decades to the time when dictatorships were easily recognizable. But the end notes warn us that many methods may be used to subvert democratic functions even in apparently democratic societies. Gerrymandering, politicizing public organizations, public accounts lacking transparency, subverting human rights and speech are just some examples that come to mind.

For the apparent, we only have to look to instances of civilian oppression for examples. Sometimes, however even without overtly terrorizing, the constant flex of military muscle can threaten and unravel the mental fabric of a free autonomous territory or even a neighbouring sovereign nation. Of course, other methods could involve wielding the legal machinery to take down and silence opposing voices, often with reputational and financially crippling consequences.

When the world grapples with a breach of sovereignty, we are reminded that peace and democracy were never givens. Of course, the same goes for a dictatorship. Systems of our own making require much work to uphold and maintain. Without that they can become very shaky, very quickly. That one feels sufficiently threatened or within their capacity to change the rules, though, seems to indicate that the rest have not talked to or heard them enough. Conflict will always involve at least two sides, and ideologies are often in opposition to one another.

But shouldn’t it be obvious to everyone, including politicians and capitalists, that our collective sustenance depends on how well we share and use our world’s resources together, not money nor how imaginary lines or cultural groupings delineate and divide us? Or have we all been sold on the myth of eternal economic growth on limited resources? Why haven’t we taken a break from the cycle of production-consumption to think about new systems for humanity? Perhaps one answer lies in the direction of the political systems we have devised and under which we are governed.

Title: This is a Dictatorship by Equipo Plantel, illustrated by Mikel Casal, translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
Publisher: Book Island, 2021

The value of a 100-yen adventure


Book review, from Tokyo – Have you ever wondered about money and where its worth lies? It can be a difficult question to answer because of the various perspectives we can approach it. Not about the business side of things or making a living, but about the nature of money itself. It’s probably common knowledge that people first started trading things for other things, or barter trade, and then began pricing them in pretty shells and precious stones, before value became tied to precious metals and fiat currency. And so here we are today with credit and electronic payments, on the cusp of the advent of digital currencies, stablecoins and whatever else is being mooted.

Well, how do you explain all that to a child?

Multi-talented Hirotaka Nakagawa’s 『100円たんけん』 (Hyakku-en tanken, lit. Exploring with a hundred yen) puts part of that story in perspective, that is through the eyes of a child in Japan, with Yoshiro Okamoto’s cheerful and familiar-looking style and characters drawing readers in to ideas that can sometimes be complex to depict. Especially the boy’s mischief, from the part where he pesters his mother for the one more thing he wants before their jaunt through the neighbourhood to find out what 100 yen can buy, to him donning a samurai wig, a pair of sunglasses, a flashy apron, and wielding a frying pan in one hand and a bucket in another in the ubiquitous 100-yen shop.

For all his playfulness, the boy listens carefully to his mother’s explanation on barter trade before being tasked to find what he can buy for a 100 yen in the most accessible of places – his own neighbourhood.

He visits the butcher, the cake shop, the fruits and vegetables stall, the fishmonger, and the 100-yen shop. At the butcher’s, he asks how much meat 100 yen buys. It’s not easy to quickly place how many finely sliced pieces of meat can be bought with a single coin, but the difference in the amounts of beef and pork presented to him by the kind butcher is immediately apparent. The boy contemplating his third place on the podium, behind the runner-up pig and the winning cow brought a few giggles.

He visits the shops in turn and the owners explain what a 100-yen coin buys – not really enough to fill the stomach. Well, he also visits the florist, and that is where he eventually decides to use his one coin to buy a flower for his mother and gets the most precious smile in return.

More than how the book conveys the idea of money and its value to its readers in a somewhat believable story, this book mischievously turns the idea of buying things on its head – per coin value, instead of buying whatever we want in weight or value as we are accustomed to. Restricting trades per coin may be the one rule that the mother enforces for their experiment, but it ends up stopping the boy from spending on needless things and letting him experience the value of spending wisely.

I sense a much deeper message for those with deeper pockets too, especially during a season of giving, don’t you?

Title: 『100円たんけん』 (Hyakku-en tanken, lit. Exploring with a hundred yen) text by Hirotaka Nakagawa, illustrated by Yoshiro Okamoto
Publisher: Kumon Publishing, 2021

Cake trees to tide over


Book review, from Tokyo – Autumn seems to have come early. The scorching mid 30 degrees Celcius heat has vanished miraculously, and I find myself in a lower 20s drizzly mist. Well, one could take solace in that the Obon holidays again welcomed the peak of summer in August, a period that coincides with the yearly ceremony to mark the date of end of World War II in Japan, which was again broadcast on TV, but this year during the Tokyo Olympics.

“The 15th of August, 1945” – this date starts each story in Akiyuki Nosaka’s The Cake Tree in the Ruins (Pushkin Press 2018, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori). Nosaka lived through the firebombing of Kobe and survived his family. An award-winning writer whose works which include The Grave of the Fireflies, which inspired the Studio Ghibli movie, Cake Tree is a collection of twelve short stories of his memories from his childhood. Its content is apparent in the original Japanese title 『戦争童話集』(Sensou-douwa shuu; Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2003, original edition 1980), literally “wartime children’s stories”.

What did Nosaka want his stories to convey? Well, they are certainly not your usual reading fare.

An oversized lovelorn whale who gets blown into bits by depth charges to protect his beloved, a similarly-sized submarine; a boy who loses his mother and his speech in shock and has to relearn it from his pet parrot; a mother who turns into a kite after applying her milk to soothe her son’s skin as they are engulfed in flames; an old she-wolf who finds the energy to protect a diseased Japanese girl abandoned by her fleeing brethren in China; a kamikaze pilot who takes a pet cockroach out on his last mission and leaves it with rations in his archaic plane’s cockpit on a barren beach; a POW who befriends a girl orphaned by firebombing, takes cover in a forgotten air-raid shelter, and runs off alone into the mountains, fearful of being discovered by civilians bringing news of the end of the war; the story of the cake tree in the ruins that grew from crumbs of Western cakes baked in wartime Japan, a tree that only children knew but the grown-ups never noticed; a keeper who escapes with the zoo’s elephant into the mountains, wandering back to a town burnt to the ground in their search for a new hiding place; a soldier who succumbs to starvation on a southern island but finds his way back to Japan and his mother through stories and folktales; a boy who finally comes to terms with his father’s death when his home bunker is finally filled; the children who deflate themselves to fill one last leather hydrogen balloon weapon and release it into the August sky; and the soldier who loved horses, followed one to the mountains after the barrack’s stable was bombed open, and decided to “quickly follow it in death” to keep its trust.

One line for each story is not enough to illustrate the emotions and thoughts that were aroused. With the exception of the POW’s humorous story, many of them end in death, whether by starvation, assault, flames, disease, or harakiri. However, I did not feel overly miserable nor distressed but instead felt enlightened to the many methods and falsehoods of propaganda and the absurd weapons devised as Imperial Japan reached the end of its tether. I also encountered a fact that I had trouble understanding when I first learned about it from my Japanese relatives – rice rationing continued until as recently as 1982, more than three decades after the war had ended. But more so, I read stories of what people had to do to survive (or die trying) and was pulled through the volume by the solace from the undercurrents of compassion and the humane, regardless of them being between humans or not, in the pages.

The title of this collection comes from the seventh in the volume, perhaps indicating a continuation of the first seven published as The Whale That Fell in Love with a Submarine (Pushkin Children’s Books, 2015). Perhaps the cake tree was a deliberate reference to Kobe, Nosaka’s hometown and a city famous for its Western confections, particularly the Baumkuchen, literally “tree cake” in German. Or perhaps the title alludes to creations like the cake tree with its sweet aroma of care and affection that help us tide over the most difficult of times.

Title: The Cake Tree in the Ruins by Akiyuki Nosaka, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori
Publisher: Pushkin Press, 2018

Picture poetry


Book review, from Tokyo – What do you get when you bring an illustrator a poem? You might just get a picture book. Apparently, that’s what happened with 『オサム』 (Osamu, a somewhat common name for a Japanese boy or man). On the cover is a gorilla holding a bunch of flowers to its nose, a little bumblebee buzzing near its brow. The French flap offers a hint – “When I tried to draw a good person, I ended up with a gorilla!” Those words belong to Hiroshi Abe, who drew the illustrations to Shuntaro Tanikawa’s words.

Curious, I turned the page.

It begins with a statement that is at once simple and profound.

ほかの生きものと　ともにオサムは生きている

(Hoka no ikimono to tomo ni, Osamu ha ikite iru; lit. Osamu lives together with/among other living things.)

The book flips page after page into Osamu’s interactions with the other living things around him – children, other gorillas, neighbours, nature – and his temperament – quiet, gentle, kind, fun. He spends his birthday lying quietly on a shady grassy patch, looking somewhat happily to an owl and a chameleon perched on an overhanging branch. Osamu writes a letter to a teacher who taught him many years ago and bears a contented smile as he stands on all fours eyes closed among a bed of flowers of an ancestor’s grave – Osamu is grateful and respectful of those before him.

The book closes with

オサムは今日も　つつましく生きている

(Osamu ha kyou mo tsutsumashiku ikite iru; lit. Osamu lives today (and everyday) humbly.)

Like many picture books, the beauty lies in the collaboration between pictures and words. Abe manages to express what is not in Tanikawa’s words, the interpretation often simple and beautiful. For instance, when Osamu visits an ancestor’s grave, we only see a bed of flowers, and Osamu’s quiet nature is expressed by him looking inquisitively at a bumblebee. There is no extravagant fanfare over a birthday nor tussles for supremacy. Even in action, Osamu imbued a sense of quiet and being at peace with all things around him, a good being enjoying a simple, humble life.

Like many a good book, another twist waited at the end.

There, I found a pleasant surprise – another poem by Shuntaro Tanikawa! In『ぼくのゆめ』(Boku no yume, lit. My dream; boku is normally used by boys but some girls today use it too), a grown-up asks “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The child replies “My dream is to become a good person.” When the grown-up pulls a frown and chides the child for not having a bigger dream, the child’s reaction is,

“I don’t need to be great

I don’t need to be rich

My dream is to be a good person

That’s what I think to myself without saying it out loud”

Trying to put the idea of ii hito or good person into words, Tanikawa wrote Osamu, the poem by the name of the good person he envisioned. And Hiroshi Abe drew inspiration from the quiet, gentle gorilla in Asahiyama Zoo, Hokkaido.

A book that reads from front to back and back again, these two well-loved children’s book creators bring us another precious book, this time a poetic one on enjoying the simple life as a good being.

Title: 『オサム』 (Osamu) text by Shuntaro Tanikawa, illustrated by Hiroshi Abe
Publisher: Dowa-ya Co., Ltd., 2021

Resilience from helpful neighbours


Book review, from Tokyo – After spying a review in a column by Ayako Oguni in the Mainichi Shimbun (morning edition, 2 March 2021), I simply had to pick up this particular picture book. Kyoko Ube’s 『リアスのうみべ　さんてつがゆく』 (Riasu no umibe santetsu ga yuku; lit., the Ria coast where the Santetsu runs) tells the inspiring heart-felt story of the Sanriku Railway after the March 2011 tsunami.

Affectionately known as Santetsu, of which san comes from the name of the region and tetsu an abbreviation of tetsudo or railway, the service running along the 160km Rias Line famously ploughed on despite extensive damage to its tracks and bridges. It is no wonder that the train line has become a symbol of reconstruction. But this book offers more than just that story.

From the title page, Yukiko Saito’s illustrations threw me straight into a dark and dank room lit only by a sole candle. An old lady huddles together with two children in a blanket while a man next to them sits hunched against the wall. His head hangs dejectedly, a black rucksack stands nearby. Their backs are to the window, so I can see rooftops washing away outside. Some power poles too. This is a now familiar image I could piece together from first-hand accounts.

The next few pages surprised me, like the people who hear the train coming through the light snow. It can’t be! There is so much damage, but people work day and night to put the railway back into service. And by the fifth day, the train pulls into the station, bringing people equipped, determined, and ready to help clean up the rubble. Many survivors become ill from their prolonged stays in the evacuation shelters, but a ride together on the familiar santetsu brings tears of joy and smiles. When an old lady apologizes for not being able to paying her fare, the train conductor grips her hands appreciatively, saying “We’re in it together. Ganbaru beshi!”

As the train chugs on, over the years, the landscape outside changes from construction site brown to a grassy green covering what was once a town. Strolling the plain, those legs would recall a fish shop here, the tofu store next to it, and the barber across the street. As the sea breeze passing through the pine forest brings back kinder, fun memories, a distant train whistle reminds us that we are not alone.

Written in simple Tohoku dialect, the book portrays the resilience of the region driven and made possible by the railway. Besides the dialect, illustrator Saito also hails from Tohoku, which makes it a full cast from subject matter to perspective. My particular takeaway is how resilience comes from standing in solidarity and reaching out to help your neighbours. No one is or should be left alone. As a Chinese saying goes, a faraway relative cannot stop a nearby fire. The nearby community must be the first port of call. So, this book is truly a tribute to the santetsu. A railway that connects and stays close to its people. Its rhythmic rumbling, the heartbeat of the Sanriku coast.

Title: 『リアスのうみべ　さんてつがゆく』 (Riasu no umibe santetsu ga yuku; lit., the Ria coast where the Santetsu runs) text by Kyoko Ube, illustrated by Yukiko Saito
Publisher: Iwasaki Shoten, 2021