秒速5センチメートル

Watch the movie instead, and/or read something else

5 Centimetres per Second is a few glimpses into various people’s connected lives at various points in their lives.

This premise might make one wonder whether there isn’t more to it, but that’s really it. …Kind of. There is of course more to be gleaned from the story – themes, metaphors, and the like – which I won’t go into here, but plot-wise, at least, there isn’t really more to it than that, which makes sense when considering that this is very much a character-driven story.

I can not recommend this book as a tool to improve one’s Japanese. One of the biggest hurdles is the needlessly long sentences. The average sentence length is 29.6 characters, which is amongst the highest numbers in jpdb’s database of, at present, 2684 visual novels, novels, and web novels, to give some perspective. Long sentences means more things to keep track of at a time, making it harder to follow along.

Another hurdle is the abstractness. There is very little dialogue. Most of the book consists of the characters’ thoughts, and narration. There is a lot of descriptive language, describing the scenery, both in terms of appearance and feel, as well as through the senses. Metaphors abound.

All of this may make it seem like it is a difficult novel linguistically, but it’s not. The language used is itself fairly simple, but the aforementioned factors adds difficulty in a way that is not immediately linguistic. This was my first Japanese novel, and I found it to be a fairly pleasant read as far as language goes. However, as is hopefully evident from my profile, I am by no means new to the Japanese written language.

Considering how much time is spent describing things and the liberal use of metaphors, it may come as no surprise that it gets a little poetic at times, which is one of the reasons this book can be so inaccessible to learners, but this is also one of the things I liked the best about it. I am fond of language, and there are some beautiful sentences to be found here.

見上げると電線が満月の真ん中を横切っていて、なんだかまるで今日という日のようだ、と私は思う。波に乗れる前の私と、乗れた後の私。遠野くんの心を知る前の私と、知った後の私。昨日と明日では、私の世界はもう決して同じではない。私は明日から、今までとは別の世界で生きていく。

それをとても申し訳なく思う。そんなつもりではなかったのだ。胃に送り込んだ冷たいビールが、帰り道の外気で冷え込んだ彼の体温をさらに奪う。

Language learning aside, can I recommend this book for its content? Probably not. It spends so much time describing the environment, the atmosphere, one’s feelings, everything, that the plot progresses at a pace that is slow even for me. It just dragged on a lot. It was also somewhat difficult to invest in the characters. The first of the three segments was the best, and the second also wasn’t too bad, but the third felt way too long for what it communicated. And if you’ve seen the movie, there isn’t much to be gained from reading this.

That being said, if you haven’t watched the movie, and you enjoy the type of writing above, you may gain something out of reading this book, but do be aware that such types of sentences are not ubiquitous. I found them to be more spaced out than I would’ve liked. Even if you are a good candidate for this book, you could likely skip the last segment, but really I would probably just read something else altogether.

Verdict: 4−