Book Review of Four Seasons in Japan by Nick Bradley

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Finding and building a future in Japan outside the mega city.

 

(This review is based on a free review copy from the publisher via Net Galley UK)

Kyo’s life ends at nineteen, when he fails his university entrance exams and his deported from Tokyo by his Doctor Mother to live with his formidable and somewhat austere grandmother in a small coastal town near Hiroshima, which contains absolutely none of the things he sees as essential to normal life. His mission is to study at a cramming school for a year and get his predetermined medical career back on track.

On arrival, he is shocked to find that people speak to him in passing on the street! Gradually, he comes to realise that they actually care about each other and even about him, the new stranger in their midst. And the community is more impressed by his artistic talents than his medical ambitions.

Interwoven with this is the story of a young American woman, living and working in Tokyo as a translator, who tries to rebuild her own life around translating a book she has found on a train, telling Kyo’s story. She must track down the author and get his permission to publish, whilst fighting her own crisis of confidence in her own talents.

By struggling with the impossible choice between pursuing his medical ambitions or his artistic talents, Kyo finds that the real choice is between Tokyo, where he must choose one career or the other, or the community which will support him whichever he chooses, or even if he makes no choice at all.

This novel, bordering on fable, quietly addresses a very important but seldom discussed issue in the modern world, which is that the whole basis for the “mega city” planning concept behind Tokyo and Shanghai, and turning the whole of England in to an extension of London, is to create a situation where every employer can easily find someone with the skills they need who has no option other than to render those skills for no reward beyond the barest necessities of life. Supposedly, there is a critical population mass of 100 million, at which point all but the 0.001% magically become compliant wage slaves, forever. The author shows us, without beating us over the head with the idea, that more traditional caring values offer an alternative to dystopia.

Four Seasons in Japan by Nick Bradley is published by Random House UK on the 22^nd of June 2023