Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi YagisawaThe greatest risk in loving someone is that it always comes with the possibility of heartbreak. And heartbreak, hurts. Heartbreak is a passage that leads to one’s metamorphosis, and a person is changed forever. Days At the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa is a beautiful story of heartbreak, love, loss, and change. Looked from another perspective, it is also about the cathartic power of books. When I read this book, it stirred within me, a colorful palette of feelings and emotions.
The first feeling I had when I read the book can be described with the word “vellichor.” Vellichor is an invented word that means “the strange wistfulness of secondhand bookstores.” In this novel, the protagonist named Takako is invited by her uncle to his secondhand bookshop in the Tokyo town of Jimbocho. He invited her on the accord that she was dumped by her boyfriend and colleague, and so she had to resign from her job to not get hurt each time she saw him. He had, one day, suddenly told her that he was going to marry someone else. She was obviously shattered. Her life came to a standstill where she didn’t know “what next?”
Her uncle Satoru’s secondhand bookshop was called “Morisaki bookshop.” Although the name of this bookshop is fictional, the setting depicted in the story has been derived from real-life town called Jimbocho. In real life, Jimbocho is referred to as the “Japanese book town.” In the story, the setting takes readers through a street sprawling with cosy cafes and antiquarian bookstores that are slinging with Japanese authors’ books.
When Takako accepted her uncle’s invitation, and stepped inside Morisaki Bookshop, the first thing she noticed was the musty smell of books whiffing from the bookshelves and cabinets inside the shop. Takako set up her luggage on the second floor of the bookshop and was disinterested in everything. She spent her day sleeping all day and night, until one day when her uncle took her to a nearby café.
Soon enough, she started becoming familiar with the neighbourhood. She started reading books, and felt her bliss returning. At this point, the book gave me the feeling of “cosiness,” that made me want to curl up in my bed and read further. The story is set in the season of autumn, and coincidentally, I read it in autumn myself. So, the descriptions of autumn leaves, soothing afternoon sunlight, and cool evenings felt invigorating to flip through.
Just the moment Takako began to heal from her grief, she found herself receiving a message from her old boyfriend. She burst into tears and realized that her pain had never healed. It just got buried under the layers of new experiences. All the anger, hurt, and fear was fluttering in the background. Seeing her somber, her uncle came upon an instant idea. He took her to the man who dumped her, and almost commanded her to express her feelings and tell him what she needed to tell. Reluctant at first, Takako’s voice cracked up and erupted into a torrent of emotional sentences, one after the other.
Afterward, she felt lighter, released, and free, which is another lesson from the book. That, if you want to heal your hurts, just communicate your feelings and speak directly, not bury or numb your feelings with distractions. In the following scenes, Takako fell in love with reading books. She often visited her favourite café with a book tucked under her arm, and she read these books sitting inside the café, sipping hot coffee while cool autumn air brewed outside. In the days following, she left the bookshop fully healed, and joined a new job.
The chapters that follow relate the account of uncle Satoru’s wife Momoko. Momoko had left him abruptly five years earlier. And a few months after Takako joined her job, Momoko returned to Satoru as abruptly as she had eloped. She invited Takako for a girls’ trip in a nearby hill station. Takako wanted to know more about her, and so she said yes. On the trip, they visited a shrine, and had an emotionally cathartic experience.
This part of the book paints picturesque descriptions with words. For instance, the description of the mountaintop, the sacred shrine, travellers, and the boardroom inn are beautiful, and almost spiritual. I felt transported into a spiritual retreat myself reading about the snow outside the inn, the long-stretched and challenging mountain trail to the shrine, and Takako roaming with the innkeeper girl in the midnight, watching sparkling stars.
The story concludes with Momoko and Satoru’s heartwarming reunion. Meanwhile, Takako also falls in love with a man named Wadi, who she met while visiting the café near the Morisaki bookshop. Once Takako forgot her book on the café’s table, and when she returned after a few days, Wadi had kept her book to return. They also often had long discussions about books they were reading and that they liked. This also illustrates how books and the love of reading can make people bond with each other. For this reason, the book is a treat for all the bibliophiles.
There are some other lessons I learned from the book. For example:
1. Always seek happiness and never remain sad.
2. Confess and speak your heart honestly – don’t worry about what people will think.
3. Don’t judge people, because they might be carrying their own hurts and they might be trying to help you.
4. When you stop chasing love, you get love.
5. (The act of seeing something) To see something is to get possessed by it.
6. Human beings are full of contradictions.
7. Books are magic!
It is also a sweet reminder to look inwards and be honest about what you really feel and think. When I finished the book, it gave me the feeling that it was a cushiony pillow or a palette of soft pastels or a tender, succulent piece of life - breathing, dreaming, loving – with all its heart.
A luminous story!
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