How a book led me to Japan

Books can have a profound effect on a person’s life. They can open up avenues of thought, inspire you to action and in some cases completely alter the course of your life. I want to tell you about a real story of how a book (and a magazine, although that sound less cool…) changed my life.

A book is a gateway into the deeper aspects of the imagination, where the author’s experiences and your own merge to create completely a unique world that exists only in your mind. But for some people, a book is just a book, and well that’s fine too. But before get all esoteric and mystical (yawn for some, I know) I want to tell you about a real story of how a book (and a magazine, although that sound less cool…) changed my life.

This is my father with my step brother Johnathan in Tokyo July 1980. He was on his way to meet my mother in the Philippines. Japan and my father will become relevant later on.

First, I must preface by introducing my father who is a integral person in this story. He never forced me to read, but I observed that he was always had his head in a book. So I thought that was something that must be worthwhile. Over the course of his life, he had amassed quite the collection of books/oddities. His collection of books kept me entertained when I was young. Not an academically orientated man, but a lover of information and images. Poetry, Shakespeare, history, and a strong dislike for fiction. Perhaps, the practicality of the real world didn’t allow much room for anything else. More than anything, this eclectic collection may me feel that there was way more to the world outside the boundaries of my sleepy and grey little town in the middle of the UK.

I would find the most off collection of books, mostly from my father’s interests. Books on Maori carving, poetry, I remember a lot on the Pacific War and Japan, woodworking, carpentry. Many were rare. It was indeed an eclectic collection. All of my father’s interests in book form. No explanation as to why he was interested in these subjects. That sparked my interest even more.

One evening, gazing up at the bookshelf, my eye was caught by a slender, yet intimidating book and on the binding written in red letters ‘AIDS’ followed by ‘The deadly epidemic’.

My parents slept in separate rooms when I was very young and so for a few years, I shared a room with my father. Some may find this odd, but if you knew just how polar opposite my parent’s personalities are you would understand why a wall and a few doors were necessary to separate them. Despite the unconventional sleeping arrangements, I have many fond memories of this time. Reading side by side, my father often with a dense bookon some long forgotten war, and me with an illustrated guide to birds, insects and such things, we would share what we read. Sometimes he’d read me an interesting quote he found, and sometimes I’d ask him questions about words I didn’t understand like, ‘Dad, what’s a Gom Jabbar?’ If you haven’t read Frank Herbert’s Dune, this will make no sense — and the Gom Jabber certainly made no sense to my father. Bless him.

After growing up a bit, I moved into my older brother’s room which was also symbolic of my entry into adolescence. It was the time for a new set of cultural influences, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, movies like the Predator and Terminator 2 and no curfew. When I wasn’t hanging out with my friends, walking on train tracks and smoking cigarettes, my new found freedom also came along with being stuck at home bored out of my mind. My family would retire upstairs around 6pm, which left me to my own devices. There was no internet, the TV sucked and I didn’t play sports. The only thing we had of any interest were bookshelves stacked to the brim. It was here that I lost myself in a world of literature. Many a night I would scour the bookshelves out of sheer desperation for anything to fill my curiosity.

Some of my father’s books eclectic collection. He had a lot of books on Maori carving. He was a skilled Moari carver. That’s definitely a topic for a future post.

One evening, gazing up at the bookshelf, my eye was caught by a slender, yet intimidating book and on the binding written in red letters ‘AIDS’ followed by ‘The deadly epidemic’.

I didn’t know anything about AIDS at the time, apart from it’s stigma in society. The book was pretty brutal. Things I remember are the terrible suffering of people with the disease. The skin carcinoma. Please fill in the details here. It wasn’t pleasant read. But you know, books aren’t meant just for entertainment to make you feel comfortable.This book made me feel ashamed and kind of guilty for being born healthy. Whether it was guilt, maybe a mixture of guilt and compassion and naivete, I was compelled to do something with this feeling. Not exactly a relaxing bed-time read. This book was a brutal read on many fronts. It made my own ignorance about human suffering very clear and also the ignorance of the West. I’m not saying that we do not suffer in the west. But if we knew the absolute brutality of every day existence in some parts of the world, we would definitely be a little bit more grateful for living in this imperfect society. Graham Hancock was was the East Africa correspondent for The Economist.

It was a realization in just one sentence ‘The West thinks it has an AIDS problem but they have no idea just how bad it is in Africa.’ That one sentence still resonates with me today. We have no idea about the problems that people in other parts of the world are facing. That notion really hit me hard. So in my teenage naivete, I decided that I need to find out more. This would set in place a series of events that would lead me to study Pathology at Bristol University in 2003. I wanted to know how disease progresses and what can be done to stop them. That’s how basic my mentality was back then. This would be a book that led me to Japan, but not in the way you might think.

Unfortunately, while I seemed to have enough passion and dedication to the subject, my analytical and numerical skills were simply not up to scratch. It didn’t help that a lot of my fellow classmates who outmatched me in IQ by a long shot, were also struggling to keep up. I came to the conclusion, I was never going to make it as a researcher. I didn’t even have the confidence I could pass biochemistry. I knew deep in my soul that I was going to fail in this domain. So much for a book changing my life right?

Well there is a little more to the story.

I passed the first year. And found myself in the 2nd year in a biochem laboratory class. In the first five minutes the content was already over my head. I remember looking around to check everyone else’s faces to see if they knew what they were doing. It looked like they did. I had absolutely no idea. So much for a book changing my life, right? I did the most logical thing given the circumstances and I walked out of that biochemistry lab class. Simply stood up and walked straight to the door. I still remember that moment until this day. Because that single action changed the course of my life forever.

A little embarrassed, yes, but more that, I felt lost and that I would be letting my parents down who had sacrificed so much for me to get to university. With no plan, no destination, I did what I usually do, I went for a walk.

Well a very strange thing happened indeed that would alter the course of my life forever. While walking along Woodland Road, I saw a group of acquaintances who were in my Pathology course but had not signed up to Biochemistry. I asked them where they were going and they told me they were heading to study Japanese. I immediately wanted to go along with them. But why Japanese? Here is where the power of the bookshelf comes into play.

Here is where the power of retrospection comes into play. On the same bookshelf all those years ago, there was another book (actually magazine but a very thick one…let’s just call it a book for simplicity). My father, on that trip to Japan in the 70s must have picked it up to get a sense of Japanese carpentry and interiors. When I was young, even before I found the AIDS book, I found this one but had forgotten about it. And it was my first exposure to Japanese characters. It was purely a captivation by the aesthetics of the characters.

There are concepts that exist here that I cannot access. It’s such a weird thing. Their enigmatic nature was a culmination of culture, art and history all together and I was deeply attracted to the characters. I couldn’t decode them which only added to the mystery of their allure. Of course, I didn’t know they were Japanese characters at the time. At 6 or 7 years old, I was barely even aware of that there was such thing as Japan.

So when I was confronted with the opportunity to tag along with these guys to the Japanese class, it was a no brainer. I’m not naturally talented at languages but the curiosity of Japanese characters, the thought I might one day be able to read what was written in the July edition of Modern Living pushed me beyond my fear.

It was the AIDS the Deadly Epidemic that led me to Bristol and Modern Living that gave me the push. And it was the magazine Modern Living memory of a Japanese furniture and interior magazine that reminded me of a childhood fascination with Japanese characters. It was the kanji characters in the magazine that sat dwelling in the back of my conscience all these years. When the opportunity arose, as it did on that day in Bristol. I chose to go along to that Japanese class. And the rest is history.

Books can and do change people’s lives.