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Twenty-five-year-old Takako’s world caves in around her, when over dinner on an otherwise uneventful evening, her boyfriend, Hideaki, casually announces that he would be leaving her for a newfound love interest. This apathetic proclamation leaves Takako in a catatonic state. Forsaking, first her job and then her appetite, she falls into a self-induced torpor, sleeping close to fifteen hours a day and taking on a skeletal appearance.

Takako’s hibernation is disturbed by a unique proposal from her uncle, Satoru Morisaki. The owner of a third generation secondhand bookstore at Yasukuni Street, Satoru requests Takako’s assistance in managing his old bookstore. She can even stay on the second floor of the bookshop without bothering about the headaches of affordable accommodation. Constrained by the practicality of her situation, Takako gives her assent and moves into the Morisaki Bookshop.

Her room, putting it mildly, represents a sparse arrangement with books crammed from floor to ceiling hardly giving the prospective occupant even wiggle room. A few calisthenics and intra-bookstore transfers later, Takako makes enough room for acceptable accommodation before promptly going to sleep. After a few mundane days have passed, Takako is forced to go on a walk in the neighbourhood by Satoru. A reluctant and non-plussed Takako is positively refreshed when her uncle takes her to his favourite café. She meets Tomo, a young and reticent woman, as the same age as Takako and a voracious reader of books. That night, surprisingly deprived of sleep, Takako decides to pick a book at random and browse through it. Her choice, Until the Death of the Girl by Saisei Muro leaves her breathless with excitement and before she realises, its dawn.

This experience triggers a reading frenzy and before long, Takako finds herself devouring books. Authors, old and new, famous, and obscure, all are read with a feverish passion. She familiarizes her with the works of Kafū Nagai,  Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, Osamu Dazai, Haruo Sato, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, and Koji Uno. Takako also becomes a regular at the café & before long makes acquaintance with other regulars.

Just when Takako is on the mend, she receives a call from Hideaki, which threatens to suck her back into an abyss of hopelessness, a monstrous place from which she has about managed to extricate herself. Will Takako’s newfound optimism in life overcome this new obstacle or will she go back to an existence of desperation and doom?

Winner of the 2009 Chiyoda Prize for Literature, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa is a slim and soothing one sitting read. The character of Satoru exudes life and celebrates the aspect of resilience. A wicked sense of humour, an almost rustic demeanour and an incurable passion for books all make Satoru a most endearing personality. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop is also a subtle promotion of second-hand bookstores. In an era where predatory practices of behemoth corporations like Amazon, put paid to the hopes of survival for hundreds if not thousands of independent and used book outlets, this comes as a refreshing and encouraging celebration of the worth and value of such indigenous bookshops and intrepid book owners.

The translation by Eric Ozawa is crisp and is also supplemented by a note at the end of the book about the availability of English translations of the various authors and books that are read by Takako while spending time at the Morisaki Bookshop.