How Do You Live?
  • Published: 8 April 2021
  • ISBN: 9781473578234
  • Imprint: Ebury Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

How Do You Live?

The inspiration for The Boy and the Heron, the major new Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli film

Formats & editions
Paperback
18 Jul 2023
EBook
8 Apr 2021
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The beloved multi-million copy bestselling Japanese classic about finding one's place in the world

The inspiration for The Boy & The Heron, the major new Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli film and Golden Globe Award winner 2024

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'In How Do You Live?, Copper, our hero, and his uncle are our guides in science, in ethics, in thinking. And on the way they take us, through a school story set in Japan in 1937, to the heart of the questions we need to ask ourselves about the way we live our lives. We will experience betrayal and learn about how to make tofu. We will examine fear, and how we cannot always live up to who we think we are, and we learn about shame, and how to deal with it. We will learn about gravity and about cities, and most of all, we will learn to think about things - to, as the writer Theodore Sturgeon put it, ask the next question' - from the foreword by Neil Gaiman
  • Published: 8 April 2021
  • ISBN: 9781473578234
  • Imprint: Ebury Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288
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About the author

Genzaburo Yoshino

Genzaburo Yoshino (1899-1981) was a writer, editor and journalist. In 1935, the writer Yamamoto appointed him editor-in-chief of the 16-book series: A Library for Young Japanese Nationals. How Do You Live? is the final book in this series, bringing in themes of Marxism, antimilitarism and Buddhism.

portrait photo of Genzaburo Yoshino

Praise for How Do You Live?

An important, worthwhile and surprisingly of-the-moment novel ... as timely now as it was in 1937

Asian Review of Books

[A] deeply thoughtful Japanese classic . . . Yoshino's timeless lessons will resonate with sensitive readers young and old.

Publishers Weekly

A quiet, introspective look at life and how to be human.

Kirkus Reviews

Heartwarming and empathetic. . . Like the best Miyazaki films, [the] lessons are often deceptively simple, but they have implications for every person who comes of age through adversity.

Vulture

How Do You Live? is that rare thing . . . It asks its young readers to think about the person they want to be, and its adult readers to reflect on the person they've become.

Wired

Not easily forgotten. . . Some may feel inclined to affirm an unusual truth: 'I am wiser for having read this book.'

The New York Times Book Review
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