Easy Life in Kamusari

Shion Miura made her fiction debut in 2000 with Kakuto suru mono ni maru (A Passing Grade for Those Who Fight). In 2006, she won the Naoki Prize for her story collection Mahoro ekimae Tada Benriken (The Handymen in Mahoro Town). Her other novels include Kaze ga tsuyoku fuiteiru (The Wind Blows Hard), Kogure-so monogatari (The Kogure Apartments), and Ano ie ni kurasu yonin no onna (The Four Women Living in That House). Fune o amu (The Great Passage, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter) received the Booksellers’ Award in Japan in 2012 and an Earphones Award and was made into an award-winning motion picture. Miura has also published more than fifteen collections of essays and is a manga aficionado.Juliet Winters Carpenter is a professor emerita of Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts and a veteran translator. Her first translated novel, Secret Rendezvous by Kobo Abe, received the 1980 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. In 2014, her translation of A True Novel by Minae Mizumura received the same award, as well as the American Translators Association’s Lewis Galantière Award. Besides Shion Miura’s bestselling novel The Great Passage, her recent translations include An I-Novel by Minae Mizumura, At the End of the Matinee by Keiichiro Hirano, and Pax Tokugawana: The Cultural Flowering of Japan, 1603–1853 by Tōru Haga. She and her husband live on Whidbey Island in Washington State.

Praise for The Easy Life in Kamusari“Fans of all ages should enjoy the author’s blend of the traditional and the contemporary.” —Kirkus Reviews“Miura (The Great Passage, 2017) takes readers on a journey with Yuki, a directionless young man, to the remote mountainside villages of Japan where the trees are plentiful, but cell reception is minimal. Miura lovingly depicts the shifting seasons and the challenges they bring to those who work in the forestry industry in Japan’s mountains.” —Booklist“This tender and kaleidoscopic novel centers a young Japanese city boy and his coming-of-age in a remote village.” —Ms. Magazine“This is the perfect novel to read if you plan to reconnect with nature this year and stop spending so much time staring at screens. When teenager Yuki Hirano’s parents send him to a forestry training program far from the city (or even cell signal), it feels like a punishment. But as he learns his way around the forest, gets to know the trees, and discovers mountain legends, he finds much to love about Mt. Kamusari.” —Book Riot“I closed the pages in whole-hearted support of author Shion Miura’s call to slow down and appreciate and respect nature, especially as I think more about traveling responsibly in our age of climate change and a global pandemic. As Yuki learned about the culture and way of life around Mount Kamusari over the span of a year—celebrating each season and the festivals that surround them—I began to wonder if one can truly know a new place without spending a full year there.” —Undomesticated MagazinePraise for The Great PassageWinner of an Earphones Award, Fiction“Mastery of words may not result in masterly communication, and a great dictionary, like a love story, is ‘the result of people puzzling over their choices’—a classic tension that has made The Great Passage a prizewinner in Japan, as well as both a successful feature film and an animated television series.” —The New York Times“Swirling with witty enchantment, The Great Passage proves to be, well, utterly great. Readers should be advised to get ready to sigh with delighted satisfaction and awe-inspiring admiration.” —Booklist (starred review)“The Great Passage has a philosophy of thoughtfulness and dedication to words that any reader will understand…Miura’s prose—and Carpenter’s translation—glides along, smooth and precise, with flashes of quiet poetry.” —Metropolis“The Great Passage is interwoven with romantic love stories, but ultimately it is the passion of the characters, their friendship, and their devotion to their task that direct and complete the narrative and turn it from simply a good book to a great one.” —Talia Franks, Three Percent