Flo is sick of Tokyo. Suffering from a crisis in confidence, she is stuck in a rut, her translation work has dried up and she’s in a relationship that’s run its course. That’s until she stumbles upon a mysterious book left by a fellow passenger on the Tokyo Subway. From the very first page, Flo is transformed and immediately feels compelled to translate this forgotten novel, a decision which sets her on a path that will change her life…
It is a story about Ayako, a fierce and strict old woman who runs a coffee shop in the small town of Onomichi, where she has just taken guardianship of her grandson, Kyo. Haunted by long-buried family tragedy, both have suffered extreme loss and feel unable to open up to each other.
As Flo follows the characters across a year in rural Japan, through the ups and downs of the pair’s burgeoning relationship, she quickly realises that she needs to venture outside the pages of the book to track down its elusive author.
As her two protagonists reveal themselves to have more in common with her life than first meets the eye, the lines between text and translator converge. The journey is just beginning.

‘Four Seasons In Japan‘ is a rich, complex yet accessible and engaging book. The language is simple but vivid. I found myself slowing my reading to savour the images and emotions in the same way that I linger over perfectly drawn anime frames.

It was immersive in a different way than I’m used to. Instead of dunking me abruptly into a strange world and throwing stimuli at me until my senses were awash with the place, this book invited me to take a seat for a while and focus on all the small details and slow but inexorable changes that define a person or a place. It was calm without being passive.

The story structure was elegant and engaging. It had a shape that added cohesion without feeling plot-driven. Flo’s experience as an American working as a translator in Tokyo provided a Western-style narrative thread on which Nick Bradley hung perfectly captured moments of memory from the memoir Flo is translating. The story starts with Flo, who was feeling a little jaded, discovering an obscure memoir that speaks to her so powerfully that she feels a need to translate it even though she has not yet found the author. The memoir takes place over the course of a year and is split into four seasons. We get to read a season before returning to Flo for a while and then getting the next season.

Starting with Flo made the story accessible to me. She provided a foreigner’s view of living in Japan. As I listened to the challenges she faced both in translating the memoir and finding a place for herself in Japan, I was helped both to see the differences between American and Japanese culture and to build empathy with the Japanese people which reminded me of how much we have in common.

The memoir sections provided a change in pace and style. The memoir tells of a year in which Kyo, a young man who, to his great shame, has just failed his exams in Tokyo, goes to live with his fierce grandmother, Ayako, in the small coastal town of Onomichi, while he attends a cram school. We watch as the two of them try to find a way to live with one another while each of them struggles with shame and grief that neither of them wants to talk about. What follows is a slow disclosure and discovery by Ayako and Kyo of who each of them is and what they may come to mean to each other. Relatively little happens in the story but it is filled with strong (largely unexpressed) emotions that produce both anxiety and happiness.

In between the sections of the memoir, Flo reflects on some on the challenges of finding the words that accurately express in English the meaning of the Japanese text. As I came to understand more about translation, I started to see it as something needed not just between people who speak different languages but between all of us who want to understand each other’s experiences.

I was totally immersed in the emerging relationship between Kyo and his grandmother. Yet even as I became invested in what would happen to them, I was aware that my imagination was engaged less with considering what would happen next than it was with taking in the vivid but fleeting moments that created and sustained the relationship.

Returning to Flo’s narrative, which at first had provided me with a sense of accessible normality, felt jarring after the time spent with Kyo and Ayako, in the same way that a familiar city can feel suddenly crowded and alien after a long time spent in the country.

‘Four Seasons In Japan‘ was one of the books I’ve enjoyed most in 2024. The story and the people were memorable, the writing was a pleasure, I learned some things about Japan and I was given a lot to think about.

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘Four Seasons In Japan‘. It was a joy to listen to. Hanako Footman’s narration was pitch-perfect. Her tone captured both the gentleness of the storytelling and the grief that permeated much of the content. Her narration also helped me take in the Japanese names, words and phrases more easily.

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