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Not for children
I enjoyed my time with this. It's a calm, relaxed book with some very light philosophical sprinkling. It reminded me very much of https://learnnatively.com/book/1030c11685/ but much more light-hearted.
This book is not overly complicated both in story and language use, but I do think the target audience are adults or at least older teenagers.
Reasons:
The story is imo boring to a child. Not a lot really happens. I am not sure kids enjoy character-driven, slow-burn books. But I could be wrong.
The books referenced might be known to western children because they belong in the western "cannon", but I doubt that Japanese kids would have even heard of them. How many western kids have heard of Sôseki, Dazai, Mishima, etc., let alone of any of their books?
Marketing. None of the publishers (both Japanese and abroad) are marketing this book towards children/teens. 小学館 has a youth label they could have put this book into, if they wanted to.
The afterword. Again, this is written for adults, not for kids.