(Jlit review) The Miracles of Namiya General Store by Keigo Higashino

The book covers

Original title: Namiya Zakatten no Kiseki (ナミヤ雑貨店の奇蹟)

I'd like to thank to the local publisher in Indonesia to choose this book to translate. I watched the movie in 2018 if I'm not mistaken. I'm so excited to finally able to read the book. You know, it's hard to get Japanese books to be translated in my country. And out of those books by Keigo Higashino sensei, this one might be my most favorite, and the movie, too. 

Well, enough with my babbling 😁

The scene in the book started with three teenagers running away after robbing or stealing from someone. Shota, one of the three teenagers, invited them to hide in a dilapidated house which was located somewhat secluded in one place. Assuming the house was no longer occupied, they intended to hide in that place. Their calm was disturbed by the arrival of a letter from the door of the house, which turned out to be a grocery store. A little scared, but finally Shota took the initiative to open the letter. The strange thing was, the letter was new because there was no dust on it. So who exactly laid down letters at night? This letter came from a person who went by the name Moon Rabbit. She wanted to discuss something with someone who used to be at the grocery store. The letter sender called him Namiya-san.

Kohei, one of the three teenagers, suddenly took the initiative to reply to the Moon Rabbit's letter. Her letter accommodated the confusion between participating in the International Olympic sports event or accompanying her dying lover. The debate between the three teenagers was quite exciting, especially with Atsuya, the most logical teenager among his 3 friends, commenting or rather reminding them that they themselves were just useless pathetic thieves.

But the reply to the letter was still written anyway, regardless what Atsuya had said. There was a kind of relief that Shota and Kohei felt when composing their reply. What they had never imagined was, as soon as they put the reply of the letter in the milk box outside the shop, just as quickly as the second letter from the Moon Rabbit appeared. What was it? After being traced, it turned out that there was something strange about this letter phenomenon. Maybe not strange, but better be called magical.

About 30 years ago, this Namiya grocery store was an ordinary grocery store, with its owner, an elderly man in his 70s. Living alone, Namiya san opened a consulting service for local residents. The consultants were usually children who want advice about their school, or their aspirations. Because his advice was always sincere, a letter with a more serious tone arrived. All letters were put in the mailbox of the scroll door, and the answers would be found the next day in the milk box. This miracle turned out to be continued 33 years later. The letter sent to the grocery store apparently experienced time travel. The year the Moon Rabbit sent the letter was 1979, once put in the grocery store, the three teenagers who were in 2012 received the letter. Isn’t it magic?

And so, correspondence beyond this dimension of time they do. Likewise, with the second letter, from a musician who was confused between continuing his dream of becoming a musician or continuing his father's business selling fish. The next letter was from a woman who was perplexed between continuing her job in an office with a small salary and doing trivial things or being a hostess with a higher salary. She supposedly had her own thoughts to be thinking that way.  

From all the letters with the problem, if I were asked to choose whose problem was the heaviest and the best solution given by these three teenagers, I cannot choose. What was unique or I could say, smart is, they provided a solution by ranking important events that have occurred in the world during the last 30 years. In the early 80s, Internet and computers were still unknown to society, including the Japanese people. The three teenagers mentioned things related to the future. It was as if this old man, Namiya-san, had turned into an apt fortune teller of the future. The letter written in 2012 was sent to the sender in 1979 was like a nonsense, but somehow, it was encouraging to the receipt of the letters.

In replying the letters, on the one hand they predicted pleasant events in the future, but they didn’t tell about the bad things that would happen to one of them. How could they tell them about such a thing? The question was, how could all these miraculous things happen? About time travel letters from past to the present and vice versa? This miraculous phenomenon was apparently related to Namiya-san's will the night he gave his letter to his only child.

Apart from the Namiya grocery store, there was another place that was closely associated with the characters, whether in the 80s or the next 30 years. That place was Marumitsu Park's Children's Safe House. It seems that almost all characters had a lot in common related to this place; starting from Namiya-san, the mail senders to the grocery store, to decades later, those young thieves.

The movie poster

I just knew there was Chinese adaptation, too 😄

In the film version, there were several characters who sent letters who were removed. It's understandable since the duration of the movie merely 2 hours, it wouldn’t be able to cover all the problems plus the solution for the senders of the letters. Likewise, the contents of the letter seemed short, straight to the point, instead of telling them about their background. I had seen the film before, around 2018. When I found out that this was the work of Keigo Higashino sensei, and that it had nothing to do with murder mystery, I immediately became intrigued. Not to mention that the main character is Ryousei Yamada as one of the teen thieves. The film version, at the beginning I watched it was so touching that from the middle of the film to the end it made me choke uncontrollably. But after reading the novel, I felt calmer because the book was actually more touching. The second time I watched the movie, as soon as I finished reading the book, I could be more relaxed. Unfortunately, at that time I read it on my way out of town. So the time to reflect on the problems and advice given couldn’t be too long hahahaha ...

Kento Hayashi was cast as the musician who was in a quandary between his career as a musician or his father's business.  He looked a bit  strange for me with his appearance resembling John Lennon; long straight hair, a jacket and baggy jeans and round glasses. Fortunately, the song that eventually became his one hit wonder for him, was quite touching. Correspondence across those dimensions felt like email era when you sent email via yahoo or gmail.  said so because, a few minutes the letter was sent, the reply was already in hand. It is certain that the writing style between Namiya-san and these three teenagers was very much different. Namiya-san did think about the feelings of the sender of the letter, while in the future, these teenagers wrote emotionally, bluntly, but that didn't mean they didn't think deeply about solutions. What's nice is when they finally found out that their solution has worked and they were able to witness to it, secretly. The same feeling of relief I felt while watching and reading.

The message of the movie was delivered bot from the past and the present. Whatever the solution is, whether it was bitter or even impossible or looked simple, the ones who sought for the advice were free to do it or not. It's like in everyday life, we probably need some advice from friends or family, but the ones who are responsible to carry out the solution is ourselves. And we must take it. Those solutions given by Namiya-san sometimes left him up in the air since he never knew whether his advice worked on those people or not. And that was precisely what decades later worked wonders for its grocery store, and those who were accidentally associated with this grocery store. The sincere feelings Namiya-san gave during the consultation session gave his shop a magical aura.

Even though it was a fantasy, both the novel and film, The Miracles of Namiya General Store is a typical warm novel or film that every time you watch it, you will feel lucky to have found this book or film. The warmth inside was felt until the end. It feels too bad when I have to end my journey to read this novel.

The movie trailer

Share this post