Satoshi Yagisawa: Days at the Morisaki Bookshop Manilla Press 2023)
25-year-old Takako’s life is turned upside down when her boyfriend, who she’s been dating for a year, announces that he’s getting married. But not to her! She completely breaks down, quits her job, where her lover also works, and escapes into sleeping. Her uncle, Satoru, rushes to her aid, whom she hasn’t seen in 10 years and has always thought of as a bit of a strange person. He runs the family’s secondhand bookshop, Morisaki Bookshop, in Tokyo’s book paradise, the Jimbocho district.
Satoru is in his forties. He’s always been searching for his purpose in life and finally found it where he spent his entire childhood: he took over the Morisaki Bookshop. His wife has left him, but his love of books has remained. Now he wants to save his niece by inviting her to live in the room above the shop.
The experience will have a huge effect on both of them.
The story draws attention to the importance of human relationships, but it also speaks about the love of books. For me, however, its most important message was that we should not waste a single day of our lives. We should spend our time with the people we love.
Satoshi Yagisawa’s debut novel became an instant bestseller in Japan, won prestigious awards upon its publication, and then gained international fame. Since then, a sequel has been published and in 2010, a movie was made of based on it, in which the author himself appears for a scene as one of the bookshop customers.
