Kamusari Tales Told at Night by Shion Miura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter (Amazon Crossing)

Shion Miura is an award winning Japanese novelist. Her second novel Mahoro Ekimae Tada Benriken won her the 2006 Naoki Prize. The novel and its sequels have been adapted into feature length films, a television series, and a manga as well. Her first novel to be translated into English was Fune wo Amu which translates to “Compiling the Boat''. It was published in English with the title The Great Passage and is about the making of a Japanese dictionary. You could call it the Japanese version of The Professor and the Madman. 

Her other novels available in English are the two books of the Forest Series, The Easy Life in Kamusari and its sequel Kamusari Tales Told at Night. The second book in the series can be read as a stand-alone novel.

Yuki Hirano just turned twenty. His father works for a company in Yokohama and his mother is a homemaker. After Yukio graduated from high school, he left home and came to live in a small mountain village in Mie Prefecture. Or to be more precise, he came to live in this town after he was kicked out of the house. 

Hirano wrote about the first year of his life in Kumasari, which became the first book in the Forest series. Why is he in Kumasari? Forestry. Yuki Hirano is a woodsman. He spends everyday on a mountain “planting cedar or cypress saplings, cutting underbrush, pruning, or chopping timber and hauling it off”. 

He was a trainee in his first year living in Kumasari. This spring, he became a full-time employee of Nakamura Lumber. Of course that puts him at the bottom of the pecking order. Hirano writes about his life in Kumasari on a computer. He writes it with the intention of having others read it, but is too embarrassed to make it public. 

As there is nothing to do in Kumasari, “no place to hang out, no convenience store, no clothing store, no restaurant. Nothing but mountains on every side, layer on layer, covered in green”, Hirano spends his free time writing about his life on the computer. He gives a little information about Nakamura Lumber, its owner, Seiichi Nakamura who is also his team leader. He then goes on to write about the other members of his team. 

Yuki lives with Yoki IIda’s family.  Yoki is a childhood friend of the owner of Nakamura Lumber. He has a wife named Miho, and his grandmother, Granny Shige also lives with them. They also have a pet dog named Noko. 

During his first year in Kumasari, Yuki wrote about what he saw in the mountains and what was going on in the village. After giving up writing for a few months, Yuki heard an old village story which inspired him to start writing again. He decided, “Why not record village legends, stories about the villagers, and other items” he came across. 

Shion makes you care about the villagers in this small village that has nothing to offer outsiders, except a job in the forestry. The characters are varied and interesting. The protagonist, Yuki Hirano, is neither offensive nor cool. He is a hard worker, enjoys his job, and gets flustered as he tries to get a date with the local school teacher, the only available woman in town close to his age. The simplicity of the story and the interaction between the characters, along with the legends and lore of the village makes this a very heartwarming read. The story might make you want to move to the countryside. ~Ernie Hoyt