One of the most thought provoking middle grade books I’ve ever read! Jam packed with art, history, science, language, politics and philosophy, Yoshino influences readers to ponder about the important matters in the world. This novel forces readers to think beyond themselves and inspires a desire to be an impact to make the world a better place.

I think this books is such a wonderful gift to the world and if it impacts a young life to pursue world peace, it would be worth it. This is a book I would definitely encourage young readers to read.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Algonquin Young Readers through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

First published in 1937, Genzaburō Yoshino has made a classic, a book that might or might not be intended for children; that can be read alongside teens and pre-teens who are starting to think about the world, really <em>think</em> about it, and their place in it.

Featured in prominent lists for books in translation for kids, this book is getting a lot of attention now because animator Hayao Miyazaki has called it his favorite childhood book and announced plans to make it into a film (even though he has retired).

There are two narrative voices inside the book: Copper is fifteen, and is just learning about friendship, and loss, because his father has died. Then there is his uncle's journal, an enthusiastic voice that wants to explain everything to him, from the chains that unite us as human beings; to the encouragement to ask the right questions about life and relationships. It is his uncle who has called him Koperu as a nickname. Copper, like his namesake Copernicus, must look to the stars, and use his discoveries about the heavens, earth, and human nature to answer the question of how he will live from then on.

The foreword by Neil Gaiman is truly heartwarming and makes you want to read the book even more. The tone and whole-hearted way it is written reminded me a lot of another book with important questions for the young, even though it was written 150 years ago: <em>Heart</em>, by Edmondo De Amicis, a beautiful and compelling piece of literature.


'How Do You Live? is on sale since October 26, 2021.

How Do You Live? may be the most unusual coming-of-age story I've ever read. It was originally written in Japan in 1937, which, you may remember, was the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War. This war is never mentioned, and yet, the book very philosophically explores the question: how do you live your life in order to make it your best life?

Readers are introduced to 15-year-old Honda Jun'ichi, nicknamed Copper. His father has passed away and he lives with his mother in Tokyo, not far from an uncle who has taken Copper under his wing. Copper often visits his uncle in the evenings to play chess and indulge in some very philosophical discussions, which are then followed up with some thoughts written by his uncle about what they had talked about on a particular evening. The story, then, unfolds in alternating voices - on the one hand, the events and experiences in Copper's home and school life are told in the third person, on the other, there are the thoughts his uncles writes down for Copper on the first person.

Copper got his nickname after a long discussion with his uncle about Copernicus and this theory that the earth revolves around the sun which is at the center of the universe rather than the previously long help belief that the sun moves around the earth and that earth was the center of the universe. It doesn't take a philosophy degree to see that Uncle is telling Copper that he is one human among many.

At school, Copper has two friends in his class, Mizutani, whom he has known since elementary school, and Kitami whom he has met in junior high school. There is also another boy in their class, Uragawa, a poorer student who, because his grades are low and he always smells like the fried tofu his parents sell, is nicknamed Fried Tofu and subject to many cruel pranks.

When Uragawa is absent from school for a number of days, Copper takes it upon himself to visit him and see what's wrong and when he will return to school. Seeing what his family life is like, and Uragawa cleverness at making the fried tofu causes Copper to see him in a different light. He begins to help him with his homework and Uragawa's grades really improve. Pretty soon, Mizutani and Kitami come around and begin to include Uragawa in their group.

When some seniors at school set their sights on Katami, Copper, Mizutani, and Uragawa promise to stand with him if they threaten to beat him up. But when the time comes for this courageous act to happen, Copper finds that he can't move and join his friends in defending Katami. Crestfallen by his lack of action and loyalty, Copper becomes ill. Can he ever face his friends again? Or will he be shunned by them for his cowardice?

In the end of Copper's ordeal, he has learned much about himself and about human nature, including how he wishes to live his life, while at the same time, realizing there is still much more to learn.

How Do You Live? in a very interesting school story and I would love to know what motivated the author to write it. I have to admit that, even though I was a philosophy major, I found myself more interested in Copper's story than in his uncle's treatises on life. And yet, the two parts make a very complex whole, supporting each other to make it all understandable for their teenage audience. Copper's story, written in 1937, is still relevant in 2021 because he goes through the same growing pains most younger teenagers experience.

I believe the translation is faithful to the original Japanese and I felt author and translator had captured the themes of friendship, loyalty, betrayal, and shame in such a way that readers will ask themselves the same questions the Copper was forced to ask himself. There is a forward by Neil Gaiman, who was interested in it because he knew it was a favorite book of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) and whose next film will be based on this book.

How Do You Live? may not be a book for everyone, but for those who do read it, it is a very satisfying coming-of-age story from another era.

This book is recommended for readers age 13+

This lovely novel was both complicated and very simple. It combines a lot of things that may not seem related at all—philosophical musings on morality, intelligence, poverty, and bravery; a story of a boy's school days in the 1930s; the effects of globalization on humans and production; really detailed descriptions of the process of making tofu; a kind of in-depth overview of the life and works of Napoleon... there's a lot going on but it all works! It kept my interest, and reading this now with a historical perspective certain things jumped out as really fascinating, for example: the words highlighting fairness, justice, the need to end poverty worldwide, and respect for laborers—all issues we are still, still struggling with today—from an author who would shortly be ostracized by his increasingly militarized government; and the parallels between the ideas and actions of the bullying older boys at Copper's school and the hallmarks of the way that fascism would shortly rise, and continues to rise, in many societies. This all makes it sound really intense, but really the feeling of the book is primarily coziness. It has a sweet, profound quality that would appeal to those who enjoy works like The Little Prince.

This unusual combination of coming-of-age story and ethics essay is amazingly relevant despite being written in the the late 1930's in Japan. It focuses on the friendships of a 15 year old boy as he learns how to understand his place in the world, how to deal with people with different backgrounds, and how to own up to his own mistakes. Despite many cultural differences and differences of age, experience, and time, I often felt a great deal of resonance with the situations that the main character has to go through. The book is particularly unusual in that the third person omniscient narrative in which the main story is told is often broken up with first person journal essays written by the main character's uncle, who is writing his advice to the main character in the role of a father figure.

There are some minor factual errors in the book (notably stating that the Russians were involved in the battle of Wagram in the Napoleonic Wars in 1809, which is not true as far as I can tell), but these really don't detract from the point of the book.

There may be some increased interest in this title when the film Hayao Miyazaki is currently working on is released, as it's supposed to be about a boy inspired by this book and the film is sharing the title of the book.

I am so thrilled that this book has been translated into English. How Do You Live? has become one of my favourite middle grade books & I cannot wait to read this with my kids.

While the smallest bit of this book is outdated, being published in 1930’s, there are many timeless morals and values to be found within these pages that will benefit readers of middle grade age to adult. Mixing philosophy, science, art, history, 15 year old Copper learns much about how to think about the world from his uncle, and what his relationship & purpose within that world is following the year after the death of his father.

This book is a gift to the world. It’s an absolutely beautiful story from cover to cover, and my only wish is that it never had to end.

Thank you to NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. I have already pre-ordered a copy for my own shelves & would recommend this one for everyone!

...the lessons of How Do You Live? make it an important, worthwhile, and surprisingly of-the-moment novel. For a novel published in Japan in 1937, How Do You Live? is remarkably anti-militaristic and even anti-authoritarian. The central external conflict in the largely-episodic book is the rise in bullying by older students in the judo club in the name of “school spirit”. Yoshino explicitly links their attitude to broader trends in Japanese society:

“Make no mistake,” [members of the judo team] insisted, “once they enter society, students with no love of school will surely become citizens with no love of country. People who don’t love their country are traitors. Therefore, we can say that students who don’t love their school are traitors in training. We must discipline any such fledgling traitors.”

Copper and his friends realize the older students are petty tyrants, especially when they choose to direct their attention against one of the poorest students at the school. With the encouragement of Copper’s uncle and a friend’s older sister, they plan to stand together against their oppressors, even though they know they’re going to lose. It is what their individual consciences demand of them...

Full review at Asian Review of Books

It is very easy to see how this book may have inspired Hayao Miyazaki. The pacing is leisurely, and the prose languid as it tells the story of Copper and his friends. There is no large overarching plot or adventure, it is simply an honest glimpse into the life of a boy and his friends.
This is not a stay up all night reading because you can't put it down, kind of book, but there is an undeniable draw to the story. There is a realness to the characters and a sense of nostalgia that is very like a Miyazaki movie.
Honestly, this book is not for everyone, but it deserves a chance, you might be surprised by what you find.

Copper is a fifteen-year-old boy whose father passed away, and now looks to his uncle as a surrogate father figure. Copper is growing into the adult he will soon become, and must navigate new observations and experiences in the world as he makes that transition. In addition to his uncle, Copper also has friends he can learn with and from, and each of his friends has a slightly different home and school life. It is Copper's experiences and observations that chart the trajectory of his journey toward adulthood, and along the way, his Uncle engages with him in personal conversation, as well as writing conversational entries in a journal he means to give to Copper at a later time. Many of these observations carry a simple foundation, but they form the crux of larger questions about curiosity, ethics, philosophy, and the nature of being human in a vast, interconnected world. The most important question is, how will Copper decide to live?

Before divulging my personal thoughts about How Do You Live?, its background is important and worth mentioning. It was written in 1937, at a time when Japan deployed Tokko, the "Thought Police", to control society and silence dissident and subversive ideologies and viewpoints. Its author, Genzaburo Yoshino, decided to write an ethics textbook as a novel instead, a shift which perhaps served to increase its popularity, as well as to avoid the scrutiny of the Tokko. Over the many decades since then, it has been republished numerous times, and found a special place in the hearts of esteemed creators such as Hayao Miyazaki and Neil Gaiman. Hayao has come out of retirement to create a film about this novel, his favorite from childhood, and for the first time in its existence, it has been translated for an English audience.

Personally, I think this is an incredibly intriguing and important story, and I found its format rather engaging. For the most part, we observe an event in Copper's life, and then Copper's uncle responds to that event in the form of a journal entry, musing and provoking thought about that event and why that moment mattered far more than it originally appeared to. These sections provided much of the meat of the story, and while some readers may find these parts to be a bit dry, I found it rather fascinating how simple events were expanded and their foundations expounded upon to create holistic pictures of critical thought. Many situations and ideas are discussed, so I found that no idea wore out its welcome, and I was able to read this story comfortably over the course of a couple evenings.

If Copper's uncle is the deep thinker of the story, Copper himself is the fulcrum, as he engages with the world around him in earnest and with a sense of wonder. He has fun, but thinks about life as seriously as perhaps a fifteen-year-old boy can. He considers his place in the world, and examines his own actions, and is fundamentally human and fallible. He makes mistakes, sometimes big ones, and learns what it means to piece yourself back together after you did something awful that torments your conscience down to the bone. I think that Bruno Navalsky's translation of this story is spot-on, and I think that its subject matter is as relevant today as it was 84 years ago, because being a good person never goes out of style. How Do You Live? is a story about a boy discovering how he wants to approach life, but it's also much more than that. I highly recommend it to all readers who ask the big questions, about life, our place in it, and what it means to live in an interconnected world where our actions matter, what we create matters, and how we live really, truly matters if we want to make the world a better place to live.

"The most important thing— more than what other people think, more than anything— is that you should first know for yourself, truly and deeply, where human greatness lies."

Are there any Studio Ghibli fans here? Did you know that Hayao Miyazaki would be basing his next film on this novel? After finishing it, I can understand why.

How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino was not just a story of a pre-war schoolboy in Japan dealing with friendship and bullying; but also it talked about human connections as well as raised questions to ourselves about what it meant to be a truly good human.

This book was full of wisdom; it discussed quite range of topics: science, philosophical questions, and ethics that we normally did not notice or choose to ignore in our everyday busy life. I was surprised how these topics still remained timely and relevant even when this novel had been written for quite a long time now. I was glad that I was able to read this at this age for it would be confusing for my young self.

I honestly enjoyed the voices of Cooper, our main protagonist, and his Uncle. The interactions and dialogues between the wise Uncle and the innocent Cooper were engaging. Cooper's journey as the seasons changes was portrayed realistically. Slowly I witnessed his growth, felt his emotions, and saw his regrets, but despite all that hope still remained.

Overall, How Do You Live? was such a wonderful, compelling read. This is a slow-paced book but reading this was definitely worth it.

A big thanks to @algonquinyr and @netgalley for the DRC. Opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Philosophy for younger readers, but I think, too, it is not age specific. In some ways I was reminded of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenace, although this book felt calmer and more peaceful. It’s a unique book, and not for all readers, but definitely will provide food for thought and consideration.

15 year old Copper ( short for Copernicus) is questioning and considering life as he knows it.It’s a book with little true action, but much cerebral thought as Copper contemplates his own friendships.

I DNF'ed this book at 20%. There's nothing specifically wrong with it, it just wasn't for me. The translation was too dry for my liking. It sometimes felt like the philosophizing went around in circles, making it feel more tedious than poetic and insightful. This will absolutely please some readers, and it'll probably make for a good movie. But it wasn't my cup of tea, so it wouldn't be right to review it.

5 stars

This is Hayao Miyazaki's favorite childhood book—and, according to Neil Gaiman's foreword included in this English translation, it's going to be the focus of his last upcoming film. This book was a beautiful, thought-provoking and philosophical epic wrapped around the story of one young boy's journey in 1937 Japan.

It's often the youngest of stories with the largest of messages, and How Do You Live? is no exception.

Writing: ★★★★★
Themes: ★★★★★
Enjoyment: ★★★★★

Born and raised in Tokyo, but now finding himself living outside of the city, Copper is a young teenaged boy growing up in 1937 Japan under the guidance of his family. He's trying to make his way in the world like all of us do at that age—looking to family, school, friends, and society for ways and tools on how to be, how to think, and how to live.

This novel portrays that sense of "finding oneself" during those tumultuous years in such an entrancing way. There are interjections on ethics, societal reflections, and life lessons. There are moments where Copper struggles for identity amongst his family and lot in life. There are moments where he is just a boy, doing boy things.

Life is not just one thing, or even multiple things. And neither are people just one thing, or many things. How Do You Live? showcases those complexities and nuances in ways that are simply astounding for a novel tailored to such a young audience.

It's a poignant and compelling read—and, most important, it's an engaging one. I was riveted to Copper's journey and was right there with him for every moment.

Do yourself a favor and pick this one if you're interested in the subject or in Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli films—this book's core resonates with a lot of the master's work.

Thank you to the publisher for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

How Do You Live? is a thought-provoking, coming-of-age story that is a Japanese classic. The main character is presented with many life questions, and as a result of those questions, in the end must answer to himself how he will live.

How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino translated by Bruno Navasky (Translator) is interesting in that so many of the ideas share transcend time. So much of what is shared in this book published in the 1930s still holds true today. This book of philosophy embedded in the story of fifteen year old Copper is memorable, and in this case, I cannot wait to see the Studio Gibli movie from filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki when it comes out!

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2021/10/how-do-you-live.html

Reviewed for NetGalley and a publisher’s blog tour.

Unfortunately, I did not like this book as much as I'd anticipated too and made the decision to DNF at 20%. I believe it was the fault of the translation and not the fault of the story itself, but it came across as very clunky and did not flow well.

Considered a classic in Japan, originally published in 1937, this is a very philosophical novel about life and its meaning. Soon to be a film, I see the appeal, but fear that the slow and deep pace of th storytelling would bore young readers today!

I enjoy reading the book knowing that it was first written in late 1930s. As someone who reads a lot of YA books until now, I feel so much for Copper and the way he views the world. I felt like my teenager self resonated with Copper so much.

How Do You Live? was first published in Japan in 1937. This latest edition is the first English-language translation of what is considered a crossover classic for young readers. The book is so beloved in Japan that Academy Award–winning animator Hayao Miyazaki has announced plans to emerge from retirement to make it the basis of a final film.

How Do You Live? reads like a classic. It transcends time, feeling young and old at the same time. There’s a formality to it that comes with the time period it was written as well as the culture, and, to some degree, the translation itself. And yet, Copper’s experiences could occur today as they did in the 1930s.

The real standout moments in the novel are the interactions between Copper and his friends. These sections move quickly and have real heart.

I found the sections from the uncle’s point of view a little less inviting. There were times where I was swept away and others where I found myself skimming his philosophical meanderings.

Author Genzaburo Yoshino tells this story through a circuitous route, sometimes using a story within a story to explain his story. Once you get used to it, it works, but it threw me off at first.

How Do You Live? is a quiet, introspective novel unlike anything else I’ve ever read. And after reading it, I’m even more curious as to where Hayao Miyazaki will go with it.

How Do You Live is told through two perspectives; the memories of Jun'ichi, whom everyone calls Copper, and entries Copper's uncle is writing in a notebook that he gives Copper at the end of the book. Don't expect this book to be plot-heavy, it's more like a slice-of-life story that incorporates philosophy and history. The central question of the book asks what it means to be a good person and how to best interact with the world as a human being. This book is definitely not for everyone, but would be great for 7th and 8th graders and high schoolers who are interested in philosophy or are big Studio Ghibli fans (because they will be making a movie of this book).