How Do You Live? by Genzaburō Yoshino
How Do You Live? is an earnest, winsome manual for living. There’s no dramatic plot, no character development, but the emotional climax, when it comes, is tense and moving and cuts to the quick. Rather than being gripped by narrative tension, we are gripped by empathy: this book speaks directly to the human heart.
“... there may be nothing more deep-rooted and stubborn than the human tendency to look at and think of things with themselves at the center. ”
The hero, Copper, is fifteen. He’s short, fast, and clever, but what’s important is that he’s observant and enquiring. He relates his school day to his uncle, and his uncle responds via journal entries. How Do You Live? is largely a dialogue between the narrative of Copper and his uncle’s reflections on topics raised. In this way, the key message of the book - reflect on your actions - is mirrored in the book’s structure.
“... if your regrets help you to really learn an essential thing about being human, that experience won’t have been wasted on you.”
Though set in Tokyo in the 1930s, How Do You Live? has a timeless quality. It’s about Tokyo and everywhere and nowhere. Time and place are immaterial, universal. What matters is being spirited and thoughtful and kind - wherever, whenever.
Copper and his uncle discuss art, science, heroism, social class, production and consumption. More specifically: Copernicus and the earth orbiting the sun, Isaac Newton and gravity, Napoleon’s dramatic career, and the Greek influence on representations of Buddha; all in conversational language without artifice. ‘So I will speak to you seriously about such matters, without even half joking,’ writes Copper’s uncle.
“For Yoshino it was imperative that a child should be able to think and stand up for itself.”
It makes perfect sense that author Genzaburō Yoshino originally wanted to write an ethics textbook for younger readers. Luckily, he was advised to make it a novel - and here it is: palatable ethics. Much is being made of the book’s influence on Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away), but movies aside, How Do You Live? is a fresh antidote to today’s empty celebrity culture and the inward-looking iconisation of the self.
How Do You Live? is literary brown bread and cod-liver oil: simple, honest, nourishing fare that sits alongside Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince and Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Suitable for readers of ten and upwards.
“It’s truly painful to admit one’s own mistakes. Most people think up any excuse they can to avoid it.”
It’s worth reading Bruno Navasky’s A Note from the Translator first to understand the context the book was written in. After a branch of ‘Thought Police’ were created, Yoshino was imprisoned for eighteen months for attending ‘political meetings with socialists.’ For Genzaburō Yoshino it was imperative that a child should be able to think and stand up for itself.
Originally written in 1937, How Do You Live? was translated into English by Bruno Navasky and published by Algonquin Young Readers in 2021.
Many thanks to Algonquin Young Readers for my advanced reading copy. I hope Yoshino leaves a lasting impression on me.
WHAT TO READ NEXT
If you liked How Do You Live?, try The Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupéry, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig.
