リカバリー カバヒコ

Author: 青山美智子
Finished: 2024-10-28
Started: 2024
Status: Read

At the Katsushika Central Library, in the foreign language section looking for children’s books in English for my son, I discovered a display explaining a language learning method called “tadoku” (多読), or “copious reading”. Its principles include proceeding quickly through material that’s easy enough for you to enjoy, not referring to a dictionary when you do encounter unfamiliar words, skipping sections that are too hard, and guiltlessly setting aside anything that you’re not fully enjoying.

That day I set aside the hefty Japanese fantasy novel I’d been struggling through and went to my neighborhood shop Daiwa Books to find something I could proceed through more casually and briskly. Robin Sloan had recently recommended Aoyama’s What You Are Looking for is in the Library, in English translation, so I recognized her name on a new book in the recommendation display near the entrance.

The book comprises five loosely connected short stories revolving around an urban legend about a hippo statue in a local playground: if a part of your body is troubling you, touch the statue on that same part and you’ll be cured. Five people partake in the practice to heal various problems in their lives that are literally or figuratively associated with the brain, the eyes, the ears, et cetera. Each one then experiences a healing process which, of course, was actually about mending relationships, refreshing the perception of the self, or some other motion of the soul.

This is an archetypical example of the trend of modern Japanese “healing” fiction, books meant (and explicitly advertised in train cars and such) to be calming and restorative to the stressed and anxious modern mind. A mental prescription akin to a Spotify playlist to help you study, for better or for worse.

I did appreciate having something written in typical modern colloquial Japanese about modern Japanese people having recognizable everyday problems, if only for the language-learning benefits rather than as a great work of literature. Dashing through this got me back on track with reading Japanese as a smooth and pleasurable activity, and afterward I was much more prepared to finish out that hefty fantasy novel….