HOW DO YOU LIVE?

 Genzaburō Yoshino’s book

 君たちは  どう生きるか 

How Do You Live?The Japanese classic shines a light upon how we find our place in the world.

It is about to be made into Hayao Miyazaki’s last film.   

I had an epiphany this morning that bridges Yoshino’s book to a Japanese phrase I heard at my first homestay in Japan... itadakimasu, before eating a meal.  I was told that it is a “thank you” to the gods of the animals and plants from where our meal was derived. That it also included a thank you to all those who helped bring the food to our table.  Now when I am about to begin my serving of rice I thank the gods of the rice, the farmers who worked from before dawn each morning, the people that made the tools used by that farmer, the drivers that carried the rice to market, the person who stacked the market shelves, the cashier, the box girl, the people that built the grocery store... next time I’ll continue with thanks to the iron gods, the people who made the steel used in the machines to transport the rice and those who harvested it, the people who made the chopsticks, the gods that watched over the chopstick trees, the people who made the chopstick making machines and those who repair those machines, and thank you to all the families of the people who gave us the hard working people involved all the way back to the rice.  Oh thank you to the gods of sun, wind and rain that all helped the rice to grow.

Granted it was a shorter itadakimasu that I first heard but I understood the message: “be thankful to all the people who make our meal possible.” and on a more global level, thank you to all those making life itself not only livable, but meaningful.

So when Copper, one of the two main characters in the book discovers the Net Rule of Human Particle Relations, you will see echoes of itadakimas.

... some may feel,

as this reader did upon closing it,

inclined to affirm an unusual truth: 

“I am wiser for having read this book.”  

--Adam Gopnik New York Times Book Review