The Easy Life in Kamusari

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).