I finally finished my second book for this challenge. I really need to pick up the pace. Since I sort book donations at the library and frequent bookstores I decided to start this challenge with countries that cross my path organically, we’ll see how far that gets me. The fiction book showed up in my quarterly TBR box and the memoir came through the library donations.

Nonfiction

The Dream of Water by Kyoko Mori 1995, 275 pages

A memoir by Kyoto Mori telling of her trip back to Japan after living in the US since college. This took me a while to finish. I had a hard time getting into it, but the last half was good. The first half was a lot of looking back at her childhood in Japan before her mother committed suicide and her father remarried. The second half interspersed those memories with what was happening on her trip more smoothly and I found myself picking up the pace as I finished.

I liked getting to know the traditions and stories. Her father’s family was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. Her grandparent’s lived in the country in poverty. Even the way her family interacts with her and each other was an interesting observation.

Her relationship with her father was a recurring theme and I totally got it. Reading some of the other reviews that was a complaint by many, but I thought it made sense. If your father was the big reason that you left, going back would color all of your interactions with family.

Fiction

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida 2024, 297 pages

The book is a collection of stories with a central location, the Nakagyo Kokoro Clinic for the Soul in Kyoto. The clinic can only be found when a person is struggling with life and the doctor only ever prescribes one thing, a cat!

Such a charming story with each chapter the name of the prescribed cat with a picture. Cat lovers will like the sweetness of a cat being able to cure all ills. A fun magical fiction book for Japan. 

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That being said here are four books I’ve read and liked in the last few years that were set in Japan.

A Bowl Full of Peace: A True Story by Caren Stelson and Akira Kusaka – This 40 page kids picture books about the bombing of Nagasaki has stuck with me.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story by Marie Kondo

My goal is to read a fiction and nonfiction book set in and written by someone who was born in that country. As recommendations have trickled in I realized that it’s the ‘born in that country’ part that is going to make some books not work. I’m excluding the immigrant experience. It wasn’t my intent, I just didn’t really think it through in those terms. I’m not going to change the rules at this point. Maybe I’ll do a spin off challenge for that.