Japanese Running

It may come as a surprise to many people, but Japan is the most running-obsessed country on Earth. A 135-mile relay race, or ekiden, is the country's biggest annual sporting event. Thousands of professional runners compete for corporate teams in some of the most competitive races in the world. The legendary "marathon monks" run a thousand marathons in a thousand days to reach spiritual enlightenment. Yet so much of Japan's running culture remains a mystery to the outside world, on par with many of the unique aspects of contemporary Japan.

Yukiko Yashida was just an ordinary Japanese American ten-year-old living on a strawberry field on Bainbridge Island, Washington. She lived a simple life of school, chores, gardening, and friendships. She was a girl in search of her own place in the world and her own special story to share. Then, in a blink of an eye, Pearl Harbor is attacked and the Land of the Rising Sun emerges and looms large in her life. Not quite Japanese, not as American as she believes, Yukiko and her family are taken from their homes and relocated to the internment camps where now it's the desert sun that never ...

走ることについて語りつつ、小説家としてのありよう、創作の秘密、そして「彼自身」を初めて説き明かした画期的なメモワール。