Synopsis

Yuki Hirano, is just out of high school when his parents enroll him, against his will, in a forestry training program in the remote mountain village of Kamusari. No phone, no internet, no shopping. Just a small, inviting community where the most common expression is “take it easy.”

At first, Yuki is exhausted, fumbles with the tools, asks silly questions, and feels like an outcast. Kamusari is the last place a city boy from Yokohama wants to spend a year of his life. But as resistant as he might be, the scent of the cedars and the staggering beauty of the region have a pull.

Yuki learns to fell trees and plant saplings. He begins to embrace local festivals, he’s mesmerized by legends of the mountain, and he might be falling in love. In learning to respect the forest on Mt. Kamusari for its majestic qualities and its inexplicable secrets, Yuki starts to appreciate Kamusari’s harmony with nature and its ancient traditions.

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Praise

Fans of all ages should enjoy the author’s blend of the traditional and the contemporary. – Kirkus Reviews

Shion Miura, award-winning and world renown Japanese author of The Great Passage (2011), delivers yet another fascinating introspection into how the ancient and traditional worlds meet the modern and contemporary way of life in The Easy Life in Kamusari (2021) – the first book in Miura’s new Forest series. Translated into English by superb veteran translator, Juliet Winters Carpenter, this upcoming novel…unravels into a beautiful coming-of-age tale that makes the reader long for a greener life – one without phones, the internet, and where sentences end in ‘naa-naa. – Asia Media International

Excerpt

Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter 

Kamusari villagers are really easygoing, especially those living deep in the mountains. They often use the expression naa-naa, which might sound negative but means something like “take it easy,” “relax.” It can even be a greeting. Two villagers passing on the road might have the following exchange:

“Naa-naa.” (Lovely day.)

“Mm-hm.”

“Your man on the mountain?” (Has your husband left already to work in the forest?)

“Says today he’ll be a holler away so he’ll naa-naa after lunch. A body can’t even vacuum with him around, so I’m in a fix.” (He says he’s working on a nearby mountain today, so he’ll take his time and go over after lunch. I can’t get my cleaning done with him in the way, so I’m upset.)

In the beginning, I often had trouble making out what they were saying. Kamusari is in Mie, near the prefectural border with Nara, and the local dialect is similar to the drawl of western Japan. Villagers often tag their sentences with a soft “na,” which adds on another layer of calm.

“Got over your stomachache, na.”

“Yeah.”

“Heard you ate too much, na.”

“Probably, na.”

Laid back as they are, they do get worked up on occasion. I once heard Nao scold a little kid: “I said no first grader plays in the river unless he’s with a grown-up! Do it again and I’ll give you what for! A kappa’ll come and steal your shirikodama!” (Kappa, river imps, are supposed to have designs on human shirikodama, the soul-ball located inside the anus.) As for who Nao is, I’ll get to that later.

Anyway, threatening a kid with kappa in this day and age? Really? And what’s the deal with shirikodama? There’s no such thing in my butt, that’s for sure. But the kid wailed, “No kappa, they’re scary! I won’t do it anymore, promise! I’m sorry!” He was on the verge of tears. Talk about innocent. It’s as if all the villagers stepped out of a folktale.

Soon it’ll be a year since I left my hometown of Yokohama and came here to live. I decided to write down everything that’s happened in the last twelve months. Life here strikes me as pretty unusual. The people are funny in a way. They seem so mild-mannered, but then they’ll quietly say or do something totally destructive.

I wonder if I can make a go of it here. I don’t know yet, but anyway I decided to try writing down everything. The dusty computer in Yoki’s place turned on when I plugged it in, so that helps, but it’s not hooked up to the internet. He uses a black dial phone—first one I ever saw—and none of the rooms in his house has a cable outlet. I wonder why he bought a computer in the first place? Maybe he was just curious. I bet after he bought it, reading the instruction manual was too much trouble so he just let it sit there.

As for who Yoki is, I’ll get to that.

I’ve never written anything very long, but making a written record will probably help me relax, Kamusari-style, and sort out my feelings. There’s not as much work to do in the winter, so I’ll have plenty of time to write.

I figure there are a couple of reasons why Kamusari villagers are so easygoing. One is that most of them are involved in forestry, where you have to think in cycles of a century; the other is that there’s no place to hang out at night, so when it gets dark everybody just hits the hay. “Running around won’t make the trees grow faster. Get plenty of rest, eat hearty, and tomorrow take what comes”: that seems to be the prevailing philosophy.

Lately, without really meaning to, I’ve started ending my sentences with “na,” too. But I’m still not up on the local speech enough to reproduce it on paper. Just imagine if you will that everybody’s speaking Kamusari dialect all the time. Not that I have the slightest intention of ever showing this to anyone. But it’s kind of cool, isn’t it? To pretend I have readers and be like, “Bear in mind as you read, everybody’s speaking Kamusari dialect”?

Or not.

Anyhow, I’ll just go ahead and write down what happened this year, as it comes to mind. Sit back and relax. Whoever you are—heh heh.

About the Author

Shion Miura is the daughter of a well-known Japanese classics scholar and acquired her love of reading at a very young age. When, as a senior in the Faculty of Letters at Waseda University, she began her job hunt looking for an editorial position, a literary agent recognized her writing talent and hired her to begin writing an online book review column even before she graduated. Miura made her fiction debut a year after finishing college, in 2000, when she published the novel Kakuto suru mono ni maru (A Passing Grade for Those Who Fight), based in part on her own experiences during the job hunt. When she won the Naoki Prize in 2006 for her linked-story collection Mahoro ekimae Tada Benriken (The Handymen in Mahoro Town), she had not yet reached her 30th birthday—an unusually young age for this prize; in fact, it was her second nomination. Her novels since then include the 2006 Kaze ga tsuyoku fuiteiru (The Wind Blows Hard), about the annual Ekiden long-distance relay race in which universities compete, and the 2010 Kogure-so monogatari (The Kogure Apartments), depicting the lives of people dwelling in an old rundown wooden-frame apartment house. In 2012 she received the Booksellers Award for the novel Fune o amu (The Great Passage), a tale about compiling a dictionary. A manga aficionado, Miura has declared herself a particular fan of the “boys’ love” subgenre about young homosexual encounters.