Hannah Kirshner, "Water, Wood, and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town" (Penguin, 2022)

New Books in Japanese Studies · Sep 22, 2022 · 32m

A young sake bar owner, Yusuke Shimoki, arrives on the doorstep of Hannah Kirshner’s Brooklyn apartment “with a suitcase full of Ishikawa sake,” in Hannah’s words. That visit sparked a years-long connection between Hannah and the rural Japanese community of Yamanaka, a home for artisans and artists, hunters and farmers, and other ordinary Japanese trying to live in the countryside.

Those visits are the subject of Hannah’s book, Water Wood and Wild Things: Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town, published in hardcover by Viking in 2021, and in paperback by Penguin this…