What You Are Looking For is In the Library

I both enjoyed and was annoyed by What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Allison Watts (2020). It’s really a series of interconnected short stories, with a couple characters that are in each story–two people that work in a very small library that is located in a community center in a Tokyo neighborhood. The first person that most of the characters in each story meet is a young woman, an assistant who is studying to be a librarian, and the second is Ms. Sayuri Komachi, the librarian, who sits in a back room working on her needle felting when she’s not needed by a library patron.

My annoyance is that Ms. Komachi is described by the character in each story as “very large” or “gargantuan,” in a way that emphasizes her otherness. She’s gruff but also kind, as she offers each visitor a needle-felted object, along with the list of books that she gives them in response to their inquiry. I didn’t enjoy the author and translator’s descriptions of the librarian and how the characters reacted to her.

But the stories themselves were heartwarming, reminiscent of two other Japanese books I enjoyed– Before the Coffee Gets Cold and The Miracles of the Namiya General Store. I loved how Ms. Komachi recommended a book to each person that didn’t seem to match the others but was exactly what they needed. There was a lot of immersion into the life of each character–Tokyo residents, all. We meet a young woman who is working her first real job, in a department store, and how bleak life seems, until Ms. Komachi recommends a children’s book, which is read, and starts the young woman on a path of cooking for herself and taking more of an interest in trying to improve her skills so she can get another job. A man who is an accountant yearns to open up an antique store but doesn’t know how he can quit his job because what would he live on in the meantime? A young man still living at home, unable to hold down a job, starts to draw again when Ms. Komachi recommends a photography book to him that inspires him to draw what he likes. I loved how the library was a place where people found connection.

But we never really get to know Ms. Komachi–most of what we learn is that she’s large, she’s a skilled needle-felter, she’s married, she enjoys a particular kind of cookie, as her felting goes in the cookie tin while she’s performing searches on the library computer, and that she has the ability to know the book that will help each person find what they are looking for. I wanted to know more about her–I wanted to hear about her love story, and how she came to be able to perceive what each person needs. But the author failed to give us that. She was just a magical fat person, alone in her back library room, furiously typing on the computer, and giving out sage advice when asked.

So, if you’re avoiding anti-fat bias when you are reading, you might want to skip this one. It’s in every chapter/ story at least once, and it’s very jarring. But, I did appreciate that Ms. Komachi was the heroine of the story overall, so I have to give it a mixed fat positive and anti-fat bias rating. I just wish that the author hadn’t portrayed the other characters’ revulsion towards her, and gave her more of a backstory, to show that fat people can and do have full lives and are deserving of respect.