A desk with accoutrements from the novel How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino, photographed on the left half and illustrated on the right half.

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Features

How a once-banned Japanese children’s book became a classic – and the next Studio Ghibli film

Genzaburo Yoshino

An important, worthwhile and surprisingly of-the-moment novel ... as timely now as it was in 1937

Heartwarming and empathetic. . . Like the best Miyazaki films, [the] lessons are often deceptively simple, but they have implications for every person who comes of age through adversity.

Not easily forgotten. . . Some may feel inclined to affirm an unusual truth: 'I am wiser for having read this book.'

How Do You Live? is that rare thing . . . It asks its young readers to think about the person they want to be, and its adult readers to reflect on the person they've become.

A quiet, introspective look at life and how to be human.

[A] deeply thoughtful Japanese classic . . . Yoshino's timeless lessons will resonate with sensitive readers young and old.

The inspiration for The Boy and the Heron, the major new Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli film

The inspiration for The Boy & The Heron, the major new Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli film and Golden Globe Award winner 2024 
 
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
'In How Do You Live?, Copper, our hero, and his uncle are our guides in science, in ethics, in thinking. And on the way they take us, through a school story set in Japan in 1937, to the heart of the questions we need to ask ourselves about the way we live our lives. We will experience betrayal and learn about how to make tofu. We will examine fear, and how we cannot always live up to who we think we are, and we learn about shame, and how to deal with it. We will learn about gravity and about cities, and most of all, we will learn to think about things - to, as the writer Theodore Sturgeon put it, ask the next question' - from the foreword by Neil Gaiman

Genzaburo Yoshino

Praise for How Do You Live?

An important, worthwhile and surprisingly of-the-moment novel ... as timely now as it was in 1937

Heartwarming and empathetic. . . Like the best Miyazaki films, [the] lessons are often deceptively simple, but they have implications for every person who comes of age through adversity.

Not easily forgotten. . . Some may feel inclined to affirm an unusual truth: 'I am wiser for having read this book.'

An important, worthwhile and surprisingly of-the-moment novel ... as timely now as it was in 1937

Heartwarming and empathetic. . . Like the best Miyazaki films, [the] lessons are often deceptively simple, but they have implications for every person who comes of age through adversity.

Not easily forgotten. . . Some may feel inclined to affirm an unusual truth: 'I am wiser for having read this book.'

An important, worthwhile and surprisingly of-the-moment novel ... as timely now as it was in 1937

Heartwarming and empathetic. . . Like the best Miyazaki films, [the] lessons are often deceptively simple, but they have implications for every person who comes of age through adversity.

Not easily forgotten. . . Some may feel inclined to affirm an unusual truth: 'I am wiser for having read this book.'

Articles featuring Genzaburo Yoshino

How a once-banned Japanese children’s book became a classic – and the next Studio Ghibli film

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