The Nakano Thrift Shop: A Novel

By Hiromi Kawakami

From the author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this funny, heartwarming story about love, life, and human relationships that features a delightfully offbeat cast of characters.

Objects for sale at the Nakano Thrift Shop appear as commonplace as the staff and customers that handle them. But like those same customers and staff, they hold many secrets. If examined carefully, they show the signs of innumerable extravagancies, of immeasurable pleasure and pain, and of the deep mysteries of the human heart.

Hitomi, the inexperienced young woman who works the register at Mr. Nakano's thrift shop, has fallen for her coworker, the oddly reserved Takeo. Unsure of how to attract his attention, she seeks advice from her employer's sister, Masayo, whose sentimental entanglements make her a somewhat unconventional guide. But thanks in part to Masayo, Hitomi will come to realize that love, desire, and intimacy require acceptance not only of idiosyncrasies but also of the delicate waltz between open and hidden secrets.

Animating each delicately rendered chapter in Kawakami's playful novel is Mr. Nakano himself, an original, entertaining, and enigmatic creation whose compulsive mannerisms, secretive love life, and impulsive behavior defy all expectations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Jun 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781609454005

Hiromi Kawakami

Hiromi Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958. Since the publication of God in 1994, she has written numerous novels and collections of short stories, including Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop. Her most recent novel, Running Water, was published in Japan in 2014 and won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Hiromi Kawakami has previously been awarded the Akutagawa Prize and the Tanizaki Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in more than twenty languages.

Reviews for The Nakano Thrift Shop

[paradiseporch · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Translated from JapaneseProtagonist Hiromi tells of her time working in the thrift shop. Absolutely nothing happens and the narrative is choppy, choppy – due to the story and to the translation. for example:Pg13 With its second-hand goods (not antiques), Mr. Nakano’s shop was literally filled to overflowing

[billiebook · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A delightful little slice-of-life novel about the owner and employees and customers of a little Japanese thrift shop (not an antiques store). You'll want nothing more than to share a lunch of take-out noodles in the back room with Nakano and Masayo and Hitomi and Takeo.

[kakadoo202 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very quiet book. Slow but atmospheric

[perednia_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A sweet story of a young woman who works at a thrift shop, its owner and his sister, and a young man who drives the shop truck.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hitomi and Takeo work in Mr Nakano’s thrift shop, sometimes aided by Mr Nakano’s artistic sister, Masayo. It is a typical small enterprise with a host of colourful customers each with their own involved lives. And the lives of our principals are involved as well, Mr Nakano with his afternoon visits to his “bank” and Masayo with the taciturn Mr Maruyama. Hitomi and Takeo seem like they want to be involved with each other but their reticence is almost painful and inevitably awkward moments ensue.With glancing light observations and Hitomi’s debilitating self-critique, we follow the ups and down of the thrift shop and its staff over the course of a year with a final chapter catching up on their development over the intervening few years subsequent to the shop’s closure. Events shift seamlessly, though sometimes disconcertingly, from the minute to the momentous, or the anodyne to the explicitly adult. But we always return eventually to Hitomi’s slow development (she is turning thirty but you’ll think she is still a teenager emotionally).A gentle and surprisingly captivating read. Gently recommended.

[wishanem · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A gentle, rambling, slightly hard-to-follow story about a young woman who works in a thrift shop and the people she encounters there. The closest thing the book has to a main plot is a romantic connection between two of the characters, but it is thin, disappears for long periods, and is implied more than it is really featured.

I'm not sure if it was a side-effect of the translation, poor editing, or a quirk that was carried over from the Japanese version of the book, but about half the dialogue in the books wasn't marked in any way, but just presented mixed in with the narration. That made it a challenge at times to tell whether a character was speaking, or being paraphrased, or if the narrator was thinking something. There were also a lot of quirks of language and habit which might have been just as inexplicable and weird in Japanese, or would make sense with cultural context that I don't have.

I enjoyed reading this book while I was doing it, but I kept hoping and half-expecting that it would come together in a way that would make sense, and it never did. The book introduces a lot of elements that simply seem to be there for flavor without ever leading to anything. At the same time, none of them were important or interesting enough to justify a sequel. It feels like a short story that got expanded into a novel, with lots of diversions and doglegs to pad it out.

[labfs39 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Nakano Thrift Shop is not a book to be devoured, but savored. There is no driving plot, no urge to flip quickly to see what will happen next. Instead, it is a series of vignettes set in a small, quirky thrift shop in Tokyo with a small cast of characters. The result is intimate close-ups of specific moments in time. Dust motes might be mentioned, but the characters′ pasts are not.Hitomi is a young woman in her late twenties who works at the shop, and the story is told from her perspective. She seems to have no relationships outside of those with the owner, Mr. Nakano; Takeo, the other employee on whom she has a crush; and Masayo, Mr. Nakano′s artistic sister. The four seem almost familial, yet in a vague way, nothing overly sentimental. The conversations are mostly gossip about one another and their customers. The language is crisp without wasted words or flowery descriptions, with a deadpan humor, and the dialogue captures the casual and abbreviated way that people well-known to each other speak.Each chapter is titled after an object, but the item is not the focus, rather it′s a prompt to sketch aspects of the characters′ relationships. Sometimes it′s an item from the shop, but not always. For instance, the opening chapter, Rectangular #2, refers to the envelope that is needed for some photographs a customer has brought into the shop. The chapter is an introduction to the main characters and how they interact with each other as they view and decide how to dispense with the photographs.′Do you like art, Hitomi?′ Mr. Nakano asked, his eyes widening when I pointed to this photograph. In his hand, he held another photos of the man and woman, completely naked, seated in front of a dressing table.′I think I prefer classic ones like this,′ he said. The woman sat on the man′s lap with her eyes tightly shut, her hair perfectly coiffed.′The man and woman aren′t too pretty,′ Takeo said, putting the photos back in order and setting them on the table after carefully examining all ten.′What should we do with them?′ I asked.′I′ll return them to Tadokoro,′ Mr. Nakano replied.′You think you could sell them here?′ Takeo asked.′They don′t really seem finished, do they?′The conversation ended there, and Mr. Nakano placed the photographs between the cardboard again and put them back in the envelope, which he set on top of a shelf in the back room.Later Mr. Nakano singes the envelope with his cigarette, and Takeo runs out to buy the customer a new one.Got a rectangular #2, Takeo said as he returned. Tadokoro (the customer), ever calm and composed, moved away and slowly pulled the new envelope out of its cellphone wrapper before carefully sliding the cardboard inside.′See you,′ he said and left the shop.Immediately afterwards, Mr. Nakano came in, muttering, ′You know what I mean—Takeo, the price was too high today.′ Takeo and I both found ourselves staring at Mr. Nakano′s beard.′What is it?′ Mr. Nakano asked with a blank look.Neither Takeo nor I replied, until a moment later, Takeo said, Didn′t know that envelope was called a rectangular #2.′Yeah?′ Mr. Nakano asked in response, but Takeo didn′t say anything more. I remained silent, starting at Mr. Nakano′s beard.And the chapter ends.I enjoyed reading this novel. The slow pace was relaxing, the characters quirky yet endearing, and the overall tone was funny and sweet. It was a nice palate cleanser between heavier books, and I have put the author′s most popular book, Strange Weather in Tokyo, on my wish list.

[ken5me5old5mate · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I saw that another reviewer had written of this book: “As ever, I finished the novel, feeling somewhat baffled - such is the nature of Japanese fiction : oblique, dreamlike, enigmatic, subtle”

Kinda sums up this and many other Japanese novels I have read, or to put it more succinctly, a novel in which nothing happens over and over again.

If you imagine western novels as a high speed car chase through busy city traffic then this novel is happening up some quiet side street about 4 blocks over.

I find myself drawn to Japanese novels, they are nothing if not peaceful to read and the weird conversations that appear to be completely normal are delightfully refreshing. So many surprises for a dead end novel with no apparent plot or storyline.

Highly recommended

[quondame · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another tale seeped in the daily life of ordinary, not ordinarily functional, people in modern day Japan. The translation is a smooth even flowing read, the story a good mix of small incidents and unclarified feelings.