A thoughtful, personal celebration of many meaningful aspects of Japanese life.
A professional organizer shares her personal understanding of Japanese culture.
When it first became popular, Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was often associated with minimalism, as she instructed de-clutterers to keep only things that “spark joy.” At the same time, her guidance to thank objects for their service was a point of puzzlement: Do material goods and personal surroundings really matter? In Kondo’s new book, she answers with a resounding yes, an affirmation rooted in the foundational values of Japanese culture. Beginning with superficial, highly visible aspects of Japanese popular culture, such as kawaii and otaku fandom, she highlights how attachment to adorable things and cherished objects can help one understand and express their personal identity. She soon moves into more private spheres and practices, reflecting on seeking creative inspiration at hot spring baths, the intentionality of Japanese hospitality, and the consideration poured into preparing food. Ultimately, she arrives at specifically Japanese spiritual matters, exploring carefully constructed Shinto shrine grounds and serenely deliberate gardens to find stillness and harmony with nature. Each reflection includes a historical explication of the concept, complimented by Kondo’s experiences—whether exclaiming over sakura (a flowering cherry tree), making her children’s bentos, or working as a shrine maiden—and how that concept might relate to “tidying up” one’s life. Kondo’s years of living in the U.S. have given her an acute understanding of her identity as a Japanese person, and sharing that cross-cultural perspective is meaningful in itself. For those compelled by Kondo, her book reveals the underpinnings of her organizational philosophy with refreshing thoroughness. Though the book’s intricate entries are not for true newcomers to Japan seeking a surface-level survey, Kondo’s compendium will delight those hoping to appreciate Japanese cultural touchstones that they’ve encountered more deeply.
A thoughtful, personal celebration of many meaningful aspects of Japanese life.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798217088089
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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