In Satoshi Yagisawa’s previous novel, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Takako finds the book that changes her life by simply closing her eyes and reaching out her hand to pick one at random from the stack of texts beside her futon. One of the joys of the sequel is that it’s a novel about the pleasures of searching for books. The truth is, we do not always know why we find ourselves looking for a particular volume. Sometimes, like Sabu, we’re returning to an author we remember fondly. Other times we see a title mentioned in another book, like this one, and we’re drawn to it as a subtle recommendation. We scan the shelves of some secondhand bookshop for the poetry collection Takako suggests would be ideal to read before bed: Kōtarō Takamura’s The Chieko Poems (which exists in multiple translations, but I’d recommend the Green Integer edition, translated by John G. Peters, and Kodansha’s 1978 edition by Soichi Furuta, which includes reproductions of artwork by Chieko herself). Sometimes looking for one book, we end up finding another. Hyakken Uchida’s Train of Fools has not yet been translated, but readers can find some of his darker, dreamlike short fiction in Rachel DiNitto’s translation, Realm of the Dead, or his lighter essays in The Columbia Anthology of Japanese Essays, edited and translated by Steven D. Carter. Or they can come to him, like many, through the affectionate tribute Akira Kurosawa paid to his life in his final film, Madadayo.
No matter if we are browsing a bookstand in an airport or searching for a rare first edition, our motivation often remains mysterious. The books lie ahead of us; they seem to know things we do not. An old friend once told me how coming across Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows in college changed the course of his life. Satoru puts the book in Takako’s hands, and tries to get her to read it on the spot. For Takako, reading becomes a way to open herself up to the world, but for her friend Tomoko, literature is a consolation, and, at times, a retreat from the world. Perhaps that’s one reason why many of the authors mentioned in this novel are associated with the literature of decadence and the Burai-ha (from Baudelaire to Dazai, Sakaguchi, and Oda). Near the books of fantasy and science fiction on Tomoko’s shelves, Takako finds books by the Belgian writer Georges Rodenbach, whose novel Bruges-la-Morte has been translated by both Mike Mitchell and Will Stone with its images of the city restored. It has the death-haunted atmosphere of a nineteenth-century Nadja or even Vertigo (both Sebald’s and Hitchcock’s).
Later in the novel, Takako and Takano set out in search of a book that, strictly speaking, does not exist. The Golden Dream is a book within a book that itself seems to have been invented for this novel, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go looking for it. Who knows what else we’ll find?
We tend to think of reading as a solitary act, but the book you are reading has only found its way into your hands thanks to the ingenuity and diligence of many. I am grateful to Satoshi Yagisawa and to my editor, Sara Nelson, for entrusting me with these delightful novels, and to Setsuko and Simon Winchester, who introduced me to Sara. I’m indebted to my sister, Melissa Ozawa, and Bruno Navasky for their patient and invaluable feedback, and to my father, Yuichi Ozawa, and my friend Hiroko Tabuchi, who helped me along the way. The book was also aided at key moments by my agent, Andrea Blatt, of WME, and at every stage, by my wife, Nicole, who read every word and who always knows where to find the books I’m missing. This translation is dedicated to my sons, Emile and Ilias, who are just discovering the pleasures of reading.