Book Spotlight: Numamushi – Mina Ikemoto Ghosh

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Numamushi, by Mina Ikemoto Ghosh, follows Numamushi as he learns the meaning of family.

What I liked:

I had this book for I don’t know how long in my TBR and I’m upset that I waited so long to read it because I absolutely loved it. In many ways, I think this is the English-language work by a nikkei author that reminds me most strongly of the Japanese stories I grew up with and the ones I continue to read (I think I’ve said this about other works on this blog – it’s not that I’ve forgotten, but rather that the target keeps moving, which I think is a good thing).
Ghosh’s illustrations are so interesting and I’m really glad they form part of the story. While the visuals for the story in my head look very different, I always enjoy seeing how an author represents their own work.
The name choice of Numamushi, as well as the explanation for the name given in the story, struck me as very Japanese. I’ve been reading 光が死んだ夏 and I got a very similar vibe from Ghosh’s work, though a lot less terrifying. For my fellow nikkei who have ever looked around in the quietいなか in Japan and wondered what might be out there or what has been out there or who might be watching and waiting, and shivered a little in both fear and anticipation of the stories to come, raise your hand!

What I learned:

Snakes have never been a particular interest of mine, but I enjoyed how Ghosh represented them in the story, even if I don’t know enough snake lore to distinguish existing stories from Ghosh’s inventions.

Questions I had:

I read this story primarily as a historical fantasy, a la Silver in the Wood, by Emily Tesh, but I’d be curious to know if this is what Ghosh intended. For example, I didn’t necessarily interpret the story as a commentary on or metaphor for the aftermath of the war for Japanese people, but I do think this would be a valid and not far-fetched interpretation. On a related note, is the discarded candy tin a nod to 火垂るの墓? It would be interesting to hold a nikkei roundtable about how we as creators choose, or not, to reference Japanese works that are well-known outside Japan in our own work. For myself, as many of these works occupied a prominent place in my childhood, long before they were widely known to non-Japanese people (Studio Ghibli with no subtitles on VHS, am I right, fellow shin-[insert generation here] nikkei millennials?), if I did include any such references, I would be doing so to pay homage to the Japanese creators and their massive influence on both Japanese popular culture and my own burgeoning understanding of creative storytelling at the time, not as any kind of signal to non-Japanese audiences.

Follow-up: