The Easy Life in Kamusari

Back in 2017 when I was still a very new and fresh library volunteer making new and fresh library volunteer mistakes, I remember having a conversation with the then-Technician in charge of the library about favorite books (hi Julianne!). Maybe I asked naively “what’s your favorite book?” not realizing how hard a question that was to answer, I really don’t remember. What I do recall from the conversation was her recommending Shion Miura’s <i>The Great Passage</i> with a lot of caveats about it being a book about writing a dictionary and how it doesn’t sound interesting at all, but was actually a good book. I dutifully noted it down (I remember wanting to branch out on my reading interests, because at the time I was reading basically just fantasy, and not a lot of it at that), and picked it up during the next Kindle sale. It was <i>delightful</i>. I’ve been trying to get my friends to pick it up ever since to give me an excuse to re-read and review it properly. And now here we are, six years later, with me in the Technician role, revisiting Shion Miura, and feeling like a great many things have come weirdly full circle in my life.

Much like Miura’s <i>The Great Passage</i>, this book takes a mundane, overlooked, not really thought about task and gives it a quiet meaningfulness. Our main character, Yuki, is fresh out of high school in the city without a goal in life, when his parents decide to ship him off to Kamusari’s forestry training program. They’ve got more important things going on in their life, see, and wouldn’t it be good for their son to learn a trade, get some fresh air, and get out of the city? So Yuki arrives in this tiny village with no cellphone signal, no night life, no real entertainment to speak of, and has to navigate the pitfalls inherent with learning a new job in a small village where everyone knows everyone else. The novel is Yuki’s journal chronicling a year in his life in Kamusari, where he starts slow, makes mistakes, feels like an outsider, but then slowly starts fitting in, both in his job and in his outlook.

This is a short book and not a lot happens. But the way the environment is described, the way you get to know the village and its residents, the way you come along with Yuki as he hikes up mountains, fells trees, and participates in local ceremonies and festivals is really what carries this book. There’s the barest hint of magical realism present in the book, but only in that Mt. Kamusari watches and protects its residents who, in turn, care for and maintain Mt. Kamusari.

I thought it was a beautifully told book, deceptively simple in writing, but if you’re not smelling mountain air and freshly felled cedars while reading this book, you’re doing it wrong.

This is a quiet but beautiful book. A little like Miura's The Great Passage, it's about work, craft and craftmanship, and the pride in work well done, as well as a quite touching coming of age story. It manages to weave in a lot of other very Japanese themes too, the hyperaging society, depopulation of the Japanese countryside (there is literally just one age-appropriate girl in the village for teenager and main protagonist Yuki... it's lucky he fancies her, even if she doesn't feel the same way about him).

There are Shinto shrines, customs and festivals everywhere, and I loved how Miura combines and contrasts the traditional Japan (the very off-the-beaten-track Kamusari village) with contemporary Japan (Yuki, who comes from Yokohama).