The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura; translated by Yuka Maeno

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

“The shop was tucked away in a place beyond anyone’s understanding.”

This is the first line of The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop where under certain very specific conditions, a reader can find the bookshop and perhaps find closure or a new understanding on the past. The shop is a strange mixture of book and coffee shop, managed by a young woman wearing a burgundy pinafore and white blouse and her long-haired calico cat. The cat will select a book from the many in stock, and the young woman will start to read aloud from the book.

If someone else is reading the same passage from the book at the same time, and if that person is reading on a sunny day when cherry blossoms are in bloom, then just maybe the person will also find the bookshop.

As with many of the currently popular Japanese books, this one is a series of stories, linked by a person’s experience in the bookstore.  Each person is seeking something, but if you asked, they wouldn’t know exactly what they wanted; and yet, by the time they leave the bookstore, they feel more whole as if something missing has been restored.

There are four stories in this one.  In the first, a young woman named Mio is tasked with clearing out her deceased mother’s apartment. The two had not had a close relationship for many years; Mio remembers her mother as cold and strict, and always giving Mio chores to do in addition to her schoolwork.  As if coping with her mother’s death isn’t enough, Mio has also been accused of plagiarism in her manga books.

In the second tale, an elderly man dreams of his youth, when he was a train engineer. In his waking hours, he’s living in a retirement home with people he doesn’t know and staffed with impertinent young people who don’t show respect.  He does know that there’s something he needs to remember. . . but what?

Two sisters are at odds in the third story.  One is off to university to study medicine while her sister has no such ambitions.  The girls were once very close—they are twins—but now there seems to be a chasm between them. Kaho wants to make one last effort to try to understand her sister before they live apart for the first time in their lives.

Finally, a young woman is deeply worried about her father.  Since her mother’s disappearance some years before, her author father hasn’t been able to write.  It breaks her heart to see him struggle so.  And then the young woman picks up a book and begins to read. . . .

This is a wonderful book that really hits all the emotional high notes.  Each of the stories begins with the reading of a real book and there is some discussion of the plot. While two of the books were famous Japanese titles, the other two are Western classics:  The Little Prince by Saint Exupery and Peter Pan and Wendy by Barrie. You don’t have to have read any of them as the shopkeeper will discuss as much of the plot and themes as the reader needs to know. I love that shopkeeper explains that what the people are experiencing is a miracle: she says it’s like winning the lottery without buying a ticket.

The book was translated by Yuka Maeno, and it’s a very smooth translation. The translator is Japanese herself so that she understands the culture and idioms but because she lives in Ireland she can better explain the customs in a way that Westerners can understand.  Some translators try to hard to explain and the result is a clunky translation.

This book is really a love letter to books, reading, and authors which may be why I enjoyed it much.  I would certainly read another if the author decides to grace us with more stories of the Sakura book shop.