The Facts
- Published: 1937
- Original language: Japanese
- Genre: Fiction, philosophical novel, coming-of-age
- Number of pages: 279
- Spanish version: ¿Cómo vives?
The Gist
*spoiler alert*
This is the kind of book that, once you close it, you are automatically wiser for having read it. How Do You Live encapsulates the storm of ideas and first experiences we weather when we're transitioning from children to young adults. It's a strange book: it's a portrayal of how humans live, interrupted by the day-to-day adventures of a pre-war schoolboy in Japan, flanked by stories about growing pains, bravery and cowerdice, social class and privilege, yet also interrupted by essays of scientific and intellectual thoughts. This book is so broad, we even learn about how to make tofu and where Buddishm comes from. It examines fear, betrayal, shame, and how to deal with all of these. It teaches us how to think, and how to get to the heart of important matters.
But when it comes to the taste of cold water, there’s no way to teach that other than letting you drink the water yourself. No matter how anyone tries to explain, you’re not going to understand the actual taste unless you have that experience. In the same way, there’s no way to explain the color red ton anyone who hasn’t seen it with their own living eyes. Because it’s something a person starts to understand only when the color red meets their eyes in reality.
Honda Jun'ichi is a fifteen year old boy, who gains his nickname Copper in honor of the astronomer Copernicus. Copper is athletic, smart, and on the smaller side for a boy of fifteen, whose father died when he was about thirteen years old. We never learn the uncle's name, but we know he's Copper's mother's little brother who just graduated from law school. How Do You Live? has ten chapters, and each chapter is flanked by a portion of his uncle's notebook where he writers letters to Copper reflecting on Copper's life experiences and their meaning. Each chapter focuses on some angle, or theme, that is central to Copper's life in that particular moment:
Chapter 1: On Ways of Looking at Things.
This chapter talks about how people are water molecules in a very vast sea (sea = life itself) and how everyone is connected/influenced by the consequences of their actions. Copper's uncle encourages him to step outside himself and make correct judgements whenever he faces a complex situation, and if possible, to withhold judgement whenever possible. He also talks about how people used to think that the Earth was the center of the Universe, and how this way of thinking is still present in us when we make a judgement: we often assume our perspectives are the center of the Universe, which is why we go through life unconciously judging others when in reality our opinions not absolute.
When people judge their own affairs with only themselves at the center, they end up unable to know the true nature of society. The larger truth never reveals itself to them.
Chapter 2: On True Experience.
After witnessing a classmate getting bullied, Copper tells his uncle how a few of his friends stepped in to defend the boy getting bullied, and how Copper himself didn't feel brave enough to do anything. In this chapter, we learn about how to discern good from evil, what it truly means to be a great person, why we must think honestly and with our own experience as a template, and why it's so important to experience things and live life at its fullest. Copper's uncle gives the example of water: you won't know what water tastes like unless you try it. This chapter also dives deep into appearances: people often act just for appearance's sake in order to seem great in the eyes of others, and these kinds of people never make it far in life because they're missing the whole point. The uncle then asks Copper several questions: what impressed you about the incident? Why were you so affected? Why were you so deeply moved? By asking these questions, the uncle also emphasizes the importance of critical thinking.
And your heart, well, it opens only when you actually encounter a great work of art in person and it makes a deep impression on you. If it means anything at all to live in this world, it’s that you must live your life like a true human being and feel just what you feel. This is not something that anyone can teach you from the sidelines, no matter how great a person they may be.
Chapter 3: On Human Relationships and the Nature of Real Discoveries.
This chapter analyzes the relations of human production and how the world is divided by producers and consumers. Behind every product we consume (food, medicines, houses, clothes) there are a multitude of people working hard to create each thing and have it delivered to the customer; the Uncle muses about how every great person has created something that has stayed with humans long after their deaths, and he emphasizes the importance of acting in servitude of the world. "What sort of discovery would be truly useful to humanity and worthy of respect from all?" This chapter also dives deep into chasing our curiosity, and the importance of not losing our sense of wonder. If you have a question, chase that question to the ends of the world until you find an answer worthy of your insatiable curiosity.
But needless to say, Copper, human beings must be human. For people to be in an inhuman relationship is quite a shame. Even between perfect strangers, human relationships have to be human.
Chapter 4: On Poverty and Humanity.
Urugawa is a boy in Copper's class who often gets bullied. Unlike his fellow classmates, Urugawa comes from a lower-class family, and after a few days of absence, Copper decides to visit Urugawa's home to check on him. When he arrives, he discovers a very different Tokyo from the one he lives in, where children have to go to work in order to feed themselves. This chapter analyzes the different social classes and why our worlds is divided in such (sociofinancial) manner. The uncle also analyzes the different kinds of poverty: there's the financial one of course, but there's also a poverty of the spirit, which is when someone tries to make others feel inferior just to make themselves feel superior. There are people who drive fancy cars and live in mansions who are extremely poor of spirit, who perpetuate humiliation and inadecuacy, and these are the people we should pity, not Urugawa or his working-class family. There are also people who "dance" in the presence of money, who will do anything for one coin, and these are the ones we should hold in contempt. "Not because they have no money. It's because their servile nature allows no alternative." This chapter also discusses the importance of empathy, and the nature of inequality and privilege.
Therefore, someone with true confidence in their value as a human being should be able to live unaffected, even if their circumstances shift a bit this way or that. You and I, too, because we are human, must live with only our value as human beings in mind, not thinking we are unimportant if we happen to be poor or that we are great because we lead a wealthy life. Someone who feels inferior because they are poor can never be much of a human being."
Chapter 5: What Makes a Great Person.
In this chapter, Copper learns about Napoleon and his journey from greatness to misery. This chapter delienates what a true hero must act like, what makes a man great regardless of their end goal, and how we must have the courage to take responsibility for our actions and their consequences.We learn about Napoleon's beginnings, his great achievements and his failures, and we are also taught about the importance of taking both the good and the bad things into consideration when making a judgement.
The people that we call great or heroic are all of them extraordinary people. They have abilities that everyday people do not, and can accomplish things that everydaypeople can't. Being extraordinary means that they all have something about them to make us bow down. But more than humbling ourselves to these people, we must be bold enough to ask questions. Such as, "What did they accomplish using these extraordinary abilities?" or "Of what use are their extraordinary accomplishments?" And with extraordinary abilities, isn't it possible that one might just as easily accomplish extraordinarily bad things?
Chapter 6: Events on a Snowy Day.
In this chapter, Copper witnesses his friends getting beaten by older classmates and he does absolutely nothing to help. Like Judas with Christ, Copper denies his friendship with Urugawa, Mizutani and Kitami, his three best friends who get beaten unjustly, and Copper downspirals into an endless loop of shame and guilt. He realizes he was a coward, unworthy of his friendships, and his sadness manifestates as a severe flu that leaves him bedidden for two weeks.
Although he tried not to listen, he could hear a silent voice. Coward. Coward. Coward. Copper had broken the solemn promise he had made at Mizunati's house on the fifth day of the new year: that if they were attacked, they would all stick together. He had watched his good friend Kitami get attacked, and without a word of protest, without doing anything at all to save him, he had lamely watched the whole thing happen.
Chapter 7: Stone-Step Memories.
This chapter is extremely special, for it analyzes what regret is and why it always serves a purpose. After watching his friends get beated, Copper falls into despair and stops going to school. He reflects that "the thought that he had done something that he couldn't undo, no matter how much he regretted it, was hurting him over and over again. (...) For the first time, Copper knew what it was like to examine his own thoughts and actions, carefully and closely." Later, after Copper discusess what happened with his Uncle, he has an elightening conversation with his mother who explains why it's so important to fail in life. She explains that the moments where we fail are the ones that make us be greater, kinder, gentler when the opportunity arises, because now we know what it feels like to regret our actions. To fail is to realize that we must work hard and nurture all of the beautiful things that already exist in our hearts. Failure and regret help us become great people, because they help us realize there is something wrong in our lives, similar to when one of our organs stop working; it's only when we're feeling bad that we realize we're sick.
If you think only of that one thing, you'll never be able to change it, but if your regrets help you to learn an essential thing about being human, that experience won't have been wasted on you. Your life afterward, thanks to that, will be better and stronger than it was before. Jun'ichi, that's the only way for a person to become great.
Chapter 8: A Triumphant Return.
After writing an apology letter, Copper reunites with his friends. This chapter focuses on the amount of courage one must gather in order to recoginze when mistakes were made; it also delves into the importance of apologies, and on the value of friendship and loyalty.
The hedges flowed steadily alongside them on the right and left, and the tiled rooftop drew gradually nearer. Just after the turn by the tile roof was Copper's house. Somehow, Copper felt like a general making his triumphant return at the end of a war.
Chapter 9: Daffodils and Buddhas.
In this chapter, Copper is repotting plants at school when he notices one of the plants has a root that goes at least 20 cm into the ground. He reflects on the journey this root has made, and how it probably grew deep within the earth even when it was snowing up in the surface. Similar to the plant, Copper was learning that to become great, one must have patience and learn how to look at one's own actions and thoughts, closely and carefully. Later in the chapter, Copper and his uncle reflect on the beginnings of Buddhism and how the Greeks were the first to make a Buddha statue. The chapter dives into the origins of Buddhism and how the Greeks influenced the way we portray this religion originally from India, and even how a lot of the Japanese religious figures can be traced back to Greece. Finally, Copper reflects on the imporance of growing at all costs, with patience and grace.
The thing he had felt in the garden earlier that day, that thing that needed to grow at all costs, had moved through how many thousands of years of history, getting bigger and bigger?
Chapter 10: Spring Morning.
The concluding chapter finds Copper observing a sunrise outside his window, where a nightingale sings all by itself. Copper reflects on how the bird is singing just for the sake of singing. Copper begins his own notebook where he, in turn, writes his uncle a letter about his own reflection, and promises to be a great person when he grows up.
He could only hear its voice, coming through the deep mist. It sounded really happy. It wasn't asking anyone to listen but seemed happy just to sing, enjoying its own voice.
The Themes
- What does it mean to be a great person? How can one become great?
- Friendship and the importance of loyalty
- Poverty, social classes, money, greed, poverty of spirit
- Bullying
- Guilt, shame, failures
- Success
- Identity
- Regret and the importance of reflection
- Introspection and critical thinking
- Growing pains
The Author
This book was originally written by Yūzō Yamamoto, written as one of the final publications in the serial Nihon Shosan Bunko Bunko. Because Yamamoto fell ill and was unable to finish it, Genzaburō Yoshino took over and completed How Do You Live? in a book form and published the book in 1937. Genzaburo Yoshino was a publisher and a writer, who began studying economics in the Tokyo Imperial University back in the 1930s but ended up graduating with a literature and philosophy degree. Yoshino was imprisoned in 1931 for 18 months for his involvement in socialist thinking; in the interwar period between the 20s and the 30s, Japan was very militaristic and authoritarian, and the government had even created a special branch of the police to uphold Public Security Preservation Law, called the Tokko. This group of people was specialized i squashing any anti-authoritatian, Western ideas expressed in any form of art, something which Yoshino was especially good at. The book was originally supposed to be an ethics textbook, and by 1942 the Japanese censors "washed" the book clean of mentions of imperialism, criticism of authoritarism, ad unpatriotic behavior, as well as the references of the problems of class. The book has now been published as a manga series, and will be adapted into an animated film by Hayao Miyazaki.
Fun fact: this is Hayao Miyazaki's favorite book.
Where to buy it:
