I found this book on the new books shelf of our library. I grab a lot of books from those shelves, but most I quickly set aside. As I read this book, I soon realized it would be a wonderful book for our high school geography course. Our geography courses are found at Mater Amabilis and are all in two parts. In one part, the student reads a narrative text (excerpts from one of Charlotte Mason's books), completes some mapwork, and reads current articles on the area. In the other part, the student reads two or three books that immerse them in the region. These can be fiction or nonfiction, travelogues or memoirs. We have tried to curate a robust list for each course to give families many options to fit their time, budget, and a student's interests. Many of the books are wonderful books, but they just happen to be the handful our moderators and members have come across and recommended. There is really a single best book.
This book is one of those books. It doesn't just serve the purpose; it's possibly one of the best possible books a Charlotte Mason inclined student could read about life in Japan. I almost can't recommend it highly enough.
Hannah Kirshner moves to Japan in order to humbly learn from some of the most accomplished artists and artisans in Yamanaka. She begins by learning the secrets of sake, but intentionally immerses herself in the community because she recognizes the wisdom and craftsmanship of the people around her. The book tells in chapter after chapter how she is befriended by someone of great knowledge who then invites her into that knowledge, one apprenticeship after another.
She is invited to observe saka-ami hunting, a traditional form of hunting geese with thrown nets open only to men. For a winter season, she regularly goes to the club house and shadows the hunters, an outsider, but a generally welcomed one.
For the darkest months of the year, when I usually feel melancholy and reluctant to go outside, I spent evenings watching the sunset at the edge of the duck pond and days in anticipation of what the next hunt would bring. I noticed the landscape change day to day as the camellias bloomed and dropped their flowers and the long sasa leaves dried to look like goose feathers scattered on the trail. I learned to track the direction and strength of the wind. As light faded from the sky, I meditated on the sound of beating wings. (p. 211)
She accompanies an artist, Mika, to gather ganpi from which a traditional paper is created. After five years of study, Mika is still learning how to properly identify the plants she desires.
While she transforms the fiber into paper with the alchemy of water, ganpi is growing in the mountains for next year's harvest. Its silky oval leaves open in late spring, and in early summer its pale yellow flowers bloom; when autumn frost arrives, the leaves drop and the shrubs go dormant until spring. I have everything I need, Mika says, to make my art: sunlight, water, and ganpi. (p. 227; italics by the author)
In five lovely paragraphs (on pp. 256-257), Ms. Kirshner describes her childhood farm:
Some years, button mushrooms emerged in the part of the pasture grazed by our sheep. In the way-back, where the grass grew tall enough for a small child or resting deer to hide, there were blackberries in late summer that stained my lips, hands, and clothes. Garter snakes coiled on the thorny branches to soak up the sun.
Find the book and read them all. It's the kind of childhood homeschool moms all dream to give their children, though few of us are probably as successful as we dream. (Though she does say, "Much of our five-acre farm was uncultivated meadow," and I can happily affirm that much of our seven acres is also uncultivated...something.) It is her quest to become intimately acquainted with the wild world of Japan that has led Ms. Kirshner on so many of her adventures.
The mountains that day were a thousand colors of green, from the nearly white shimmer of new leaves to the deep blue green of sugi and Noto hiba cypress, all luminous under an overcast sky. They stay that way--infinitely varied--only for a few days, and then the deciduous trees gradually darken into a more uniform green until the cold snap of autumn nights sets them alight in famously fiery hues. (pp. 262-263)
The author presents herself to the people of Japan as someone eager to learn because she respects who they are and recognizes the value their communities and skills bring to Japan and to the world. She is profoundly respectful of Japanese people and culture, which I am eager for my children to emulate.
The text is interspersed with drawings, maps, and recipes. It's a delight to read.
I have received nothing in exchange for this post. Links to Amazon.com and Bookshop.org are affiliate links. I checked this book out from the library.
