A collection of short stories each depicting a slice of daily life in Japan. Each story follows a different set of character and were really short - shorter than your average short story.

I feel like Japanese short story collections typically follow some sort of theme and there’s a centralized setting each of the stories take place in (i.e. What You Are Looking For Is In The Library, Before The Coffee Gets Cold, etc) but this collection felt very random, even the chapter titles are random (My love for daikon was so great that when I found myself living in a part of the world where it wasn’t commonly grown, I decided to try growing it myself; I ended up serving daikon dishes to my neighbors, and even making up a kid’s story about daikon... this is a real chapter…chapter 6 to be exact).

I thought it was alright - a quick and easy read to get through and I enjoy reading about mundane, daily life stories. Some times I thought the writing was a bit dull though, but not sure if it’s the writing itself or the translation. Perhaps this book would also benefit from having a cat on the cover like all other Japanese translated books?? i don’t know!

The story I liked the most was: Standing outside a small house, three junior high students who were skipping school look toward the nearby train station; ten years later.

I received an arc of this book via NetGalley in exchange for a review!!!

34 short stories describing daily life of mostly Japanese protagonists, most (if not all) highlighting the theme of "life goes on", and the futility of struggling against it. None of the stories stand out as such, and nothing here is out of the ordinary, but, taken together, they convey a certain sense of "Japanese-ness" that is often elusive elsewhere. The pared down writing style helps with this a lot - most characters and places don't have names, and the time of writing is rarely made clear. The reader has to focus on the events in each story, and their deterministic conclusion.

I started reading the book dreading it, frankly, given the reviews online. However, as I went from story to story I couldn't help but be drawn by the atmospheric writing, and the world the author creates through it. In this world, while individual events can be sad, and specific situations bleak, the minute one steps back and looks at it all from afar, "life goes on". There is something optimistic, beautiful, and powerful in such a narrative - things go on, and, yes, life can be hard and confusing, but time erodes much of the sharpness of events, leaving just the perpetuity of being. The more the stories progress the more the meta narrative gains shape and becomes increasingly philosophically poignant.

I also absolutely loved the story titles - each representing its own microcosm, and, often, more powerful and to-the-point than the stories they precede.

The author, however, can come across as trying too hard to tell a broader story, and misses making the stories themselves be engaging. In other words - while I loved the broader context of the collection, most stories, in their own individual rights, failed to impress.

Highly recommended to short story lovers (even if it is just to see what one can make of a well planned collection), and lovers of Japanese literature and culture more broadly.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

This book of short stories was an interesting read for me. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it either. The stories don’t intertwine or correlate with one another, but I didn’t feel confused about what was going on or who was who. It was fun to read about life in Japan and I loved how each story had a recurring theme: life moves on. Nothing stays the same, nobody is the same person they were yesterday, and what we do now affects not only the trajectory of our life but of those who we will never meet yet we relate to in spirit and circumstance. I enjoyed it. I may be generous by giving this book four stars, but that’s fine with me. I believe it deserves it and I want to read more of Shibasaki’s work. ☺️

I received an arc from Stone Bridge Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions and statements are my own.

#AHundredYearsandaDay #NetGalley