What You Are Looking For Is in the Library

Ryo Urase is a primary character. His storyline features in Chapter 2. Like Tomoka, 35-year-old Ryo is unhappy and immobilized in the narrative present. He is working as an accountant at a furniture manufacturing company and doesn’t find the work gratifying. He’s good at what he does, but has “an incompetent boss and an assistant with attitude,” who make his work life difficult (67). His coworkers often expect him to pick up their slack, and thus consign Ryo to long, tiring days at the office. What Ryo really wants to do is to open an antique store like Enmokuya, the antique shop he fell in love with as a teenager. In high school, Ryo frequented Enmokuya and developed a relationship with its owner Mr. Ebigawa. Enmokuya and Mr. Ebigawa fostered Ryo’s love for antiques and his longing to create a space that connected people to precious and rare objects. Years have passed and Ryo’s dream remains intact. However, Ryo lacks the time, money, and vision to exact this dream.

Over the course of Chapter 2, Ryo’s relationships with his girlfriend Hina, the librarian Komachi, the bookshop owner Yasuhara, and his acquaintance Mr. Nasuda encourage him to pursue his youthful dream. In Hina, Ryo finds a confidante and a friend. Hina has aspirations of her own that parallel Ryo’s, and she thus encourages Ryo to make his dream a reality. Komachi helps Ryo to see that being a dreamer isn’t a negative quality, and that whether or not he opens his antique shop, he isn’t a failure. Yasuhara helps Ryo to imagine the possibility of sustaining two parallel career paths. These connections change Ryo’s defeatist outlook and motivate him to work toward his goal in more direct ways. By the end of Ryo’s chapter, he has begun to make business plans for his store, while maintaining his office job.

Natsumi Sakitani is a primary character, whose storyline features in Chapter 3. Natsumi is 40 years old. She is married to Shuji, with whom she has a two-year-old daughter named Futaba. For 13 years, Natsumi worked as an editor for Mila, the publishing company Banyusha’s young magazine for girls. The work gratified Natsumi and gave her a sense of meaning and purpose. Therefore, when she got pregnant at 37, she “desperately tried to make sure that nobody [at work] would have a problem working with [her] because [she] was pregnant” (121). She then took an abbreviated maternity leave so she could get back to work and maintain her position at the magazine. Her efforts failed and Natsumi lost her job at Mila, and she was reassigned to Banyusha’s information resources department. Natsumi is thankful that she can still work after her daughter’s birth, but her new clerical position doesn’t intellectually or creatively stimulate her. Meanwhile, her home life is entrapping and overwhelming. Natsumi loves her daughter and tries to be a good mother, but she feels unsupported by her husband and frustrated that she has no alone time to develop her book-publishing aspirations. She is caught in a state of ennui and doesn’t know how to free herself from this emotional despair.

Natsumi discovers a new outlook on her life and work through her time at the Hatori Community House and her close relationships. She particularly learns from Komachi’s Door to the Moon book recommendation, realizing that life is about balance. The book helps her to think about her home, maternal, and marital circumstances differently, and gives her the courage to pursue a new career path. In time, she remembers that she’s always wanted to make books for people, and that a job at a different publishing house might allow her to exact this dream. With Mizue Kanata’s and Kiriyama’s guidance and encouragement, Natsumi leaves Banyusha and secures an editing position at Maple Publications. She also figures out how to communicate with Shuji about their home life more effectively. These life changes give Natsumi a new sense of self-worth and meaning.

Hiroya Suda is another primary character who changes over the course of his particular chapter. His storyline features in Chapter 4. At the start of the chapter, 30-year-old Hiroya is disconnected, lonely, and discouraged. Hiroya lives at home in Tokyo with his mother and doesn’t have a job or a direction in life. He loves to draw and has always dreamed of being a professional manga illustrator. He cultivated a drawing practice in his youth and even went to school for illustration. However, since finishing his degree, he’s been unable to find jobs that let him “do the kind of illustration work [he] like[s]” and fears that he isn’t “capable of doing anything else” outside of this artistic realm (196). Once he starts spending time at the Hatori Community House, Hiroya discovers a new outlook on life and himself. Furthermore, his interactions and connections with characters including Seitaro, Nozomi Morinaga, and Komachi reignite his creative passions. He realizes that like Seitaro he can still follow his dreams no matter how old he is. Through Nozomi and Komachi, he realizes that life is unexpected and that artwork and literature speak to different people in different ways. Securing a part-time job at the Hatori Community House also energizes Hiroya and grants him a sense of meaning and purpose. The job connects him with his wider community, and helps him to feel more financially stable and personally secure.

Masao Gonno is another primary character. His storyline features in Chapter 5. When Masao turns 65, he decides to retire from his job at the Honeydome cookie company Kuremiyado. He is relieved when he finishes his last day, and feels both a sense of “wistfulness and a sense of accomplishment” (241). Over time, Masao’s regard for his retirement devolves. He feels lonely, purposeless, and invisible. He knows that he could be doing something else with his newfound free time, but his lack of direction renders him inactive. He realizes that he doesn’t have friends outside of work, and that now that he isn’t working, he has no community. Without other people and without a job, Masao slips into a state of ennui. However, like Tomoka, Ryo, Natsumi, and Hiroya, Masao finds meaning, direction, and encouragement from books, conversations, and visits to the community center. Over time, Masao learns that his identity and relevance are not limited to his former job, and that he can still influence others’ lives in his retirement. Reconnecting with his daughter, spending more time with his wife, reading poetry, cultivating new skills, and opening himself to what each day has to offer infuse Masao’s life with meaning.