A Word In Edgewise: What You Are Looking For Is In The Library – A Valentine for All Seasons

Five Tokyo citizens, each feeling “stuck.” Something is missing. Is it innate? Are others to blame? What can I do? How? Is this all there is?

Fortunately, each has someone–friend, spouse, co-worker–who suggests they visit Hatori Community House, adjacent to the elementary school. Available to residents of the ward, it offers cheap classes in almost anything you want; Excel, Go, haiku, flower arraigning. And, a library.

Bored to tears in the country, Tomoka, 21, dreamed of Tokyo. Unique among her friends, she came, graduated junior college, but now despairs of her dead-end sales position in a chain store. One lunch break she chats with Kiriyama, employee in a neighboring eyeglass shop. Sympathetic but pragmatic, Kiriyama suggests computer classes at the nearby Community House.

Retired stay-at-home after 42 years with his company, 65-yer-old Masao is aimless, forgetting chores he’d promised his younger wife, Yoriko, he’d perform. One day she hands him a flyer; Go classes starting at the Community House where she teaches computer skills. Dutifully, he signs up.  

During their first visits, Masao and Tomoko–like the others in their turn–seek the librarian’s advice for suitable books for study. Wedged in her little cubicle, ceaselessly felting small wool creatures and objects on hooks, her Honeydome cookie box of felting supplies nearby, Librarian Sayuri does not embody anyone’s stereotype of that profession:

 “The librarian is huge…I mean like really huge. But huge as in big, not fat… Her skin is super pale…She reminds me of a polar bear curled up in a cave for winter.” “A very large woman…she reminds me of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters.” “Large, pale, of indeterminate age…she reminded me of the Disney Baymax character,” “I didn’t see anyone except someone who looks like Genma Saotome…you know, the one who turns into a giant panda when water splashes on him.” “My feet stop dead at the sight of a very large woman…her extremely pale skin reminds me of a white glutinous rice cake in a shrine at New Year.”

They all observe her non-stop felting; each is gifted with a creature or object upon leave-taking. These are mere glimpses into the awakenings of two of the characters. Bonds form between others as self-knowledge broadens and self-esteem blossoms, the bonus books touch inner chords with the reader; each felted gift strikes a spark.

Thanked, Sayuri Komachi demurs. “You may say it was the book, but it is how you read the book that is most valuable, rather than any power it may have itself.” Those bonus gifts? “I just choose at random… even if I have some inkling about a person, I don’t tell them anything. People find meaning in the bonus gifts for themselves. It’s the same with books. Readers make their own personal connections to words, irrespective of the writer’s intentions, and each reader gains something unique.’

Characters interact, assist–not dei ex machina, but through the quotidian. Masao’s wife Yoriko is Yomoka’s Excel instructor–and why not? Both reside in Hatori ward. That something is found, not through magic or artifice, but persistence and application; Go’s complex strategies remain a stretch for Masao, but he persists, learns, enjoys.

Aoyama’s novel is a literary Tardis–far larger on the inside than anticipated from without. Purchase for a gift, but explore its paths and crossroads yourself, note the bibliography of bonus books before you wrap and tie the bow.