The Forest Of Wool And Steel | the-readers-guide

The Forest of Wool and Steel, by Natsu Miyashita

There’s a romantic yet understated beauty to this book that has me thinking about it still many months later. Knowing I’ll pick it up again, when I wish to learn the quiet lesson again of Tomura.

I read this book a few months ago, and am now reading another book translated from the original Japanese. A few other Japanese books have dominated the mix of reading of late, but not by design, just a happy accident. In each of them, this one included, the curiosity strikes that if this is how beautifully the text can be translated into another language, what must it be to read it in the original language, with the original depth of expression.

On this, the author by way of the main character holds a repeat touchstone theme of respect for both writing and music as connective expression. Another writer, Tamiki Hara is expressly invoked at times, which, as Miyashita does, I’ll come back to.

This is a simple book on face value, but holds a deceptiveness of language and scale. It is written in the first person by the main character, Tomura, and begins with them at age 17, in school, in their small out-of-the-way mountain village in Hokkaido, being asked to help Mr Itadori, a piano tuner, who has come to maintain the school's own piano.

I say ‘them’ above as without knowing for quite a chunk of the book whether their’s was a gendered name, the matter of gender really wasn’t significant, either for them as main character, or for most of the characters. There are twin girls as characters that I kept assuming that he’d be set up to choose as romantic interests, but that vague light touch theme is the closest element to significance on that front. The heart is the piano, and what it sets off for and in the characters. That instrument which, when the lid is lifted and its own heart revealed, is the titular forest of wool and steel.

From the first encounter of seeing Mr Itadori’s work, Tomura is transfixed. A transformative moment that has them wish to apprentice to become a piano tuner. To have this as the thing they do. As above, deceptively simple, for it is here their understanding of the world, and their part in it, sparks.

Reserved more than shy, Tomura chases the dream and lands the job. In learning from different tuners, he sees the role through different lenses. For some it is about the instrument, for others more about honouring their regular clients and their wishes related to and expressed through their various pianos.

Tomura is dedicated and hardworking, but reflective. Thinking that the learning is about the quality of the job becomes an understanding of what that entails beyond the pianos, to their resonant meaning for those that care to engage, as he (as it slowly emerges, Tomura is ‘he’) does.

To return to Tamiki Hara as a direct quote in the book: “Bright, quiet, crystal-clear writing that evokes fond memories, that seems a touch sentiments yet is unsparing and deep, writing as lovely as a dream, yet exact as reality.”

This is fair to say for Miyashita’s own writing here also. An interplay of sentiment, reflection and clarity. For Tomura, he feels that a tuner “should aim for a certain state of being.” This is also reinforced by one of the twins as client players, Kazune, expressing that playing the piano isn’t how they’ll make a living, rather “It’s how I’ll make a life.”

There’s a romantic yet understated beauty to this book that has me thinking about it still many months later. Knowing I’ll pick it up again, when I wish to learn the quiet lesson again of Tomura. That doing something small, in somewhere small, that is the wish of the heart, that resonates with other hearts, has value. Not changing the whole world, but his little part of it, through care and hard work and knowing beauty when he sees it. And having it exemplified through the beauty of this clean, clear, deceptively simple and deep book, Miyashita has I think contributed to that which they wished to express.

By Chris O’Malley

ISBN: 9780857525185

Book review, by Chris O’Malley