Things Become Other Things
A Walking Memoir
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A transformative 300-mile walk along Japan’s ancient pilgrimage routes and through depopulating villages inspires a heartrending remembrance of a long-lost friend, documented in poignant, imaginative prose and remarkable photography.
“An epic, exquisitely detailed journey, on foot, through a rural Japan few of us are likely to experience. Uniquely unforgettable.”—William Gibson, New York Times bestselling author of Neuromancer
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Smithsonian Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Shelf Awareness
Photographer and essayist Craig Mod is a veteran of long solo walks. But in 2021, during the pandemic shutdown of Japan’s borders, one particular walk around the Kumano Kodō routes—the ancient pilgrimage paths of Japan’s southern Kii Peninsula—took on an unexpectedly personal new significance. Mod found himself reflecting on his own childhood in a post-industrial American town, his experiences as an adoptee, his unlikely relocation to Japan at nineteen, and his relationship with one lost friend, whose life was tragically cut short after their paths diverged. For Mod, the walk became a tool to bear witness to a quiet grace visible only when “you’re bored out of your skull and the miles left are long.”
Tracing a 300-mile-long journey, Things Become Other Things folds together history, literature, poetry, Shinto and Buddhist spirituality, and contemporary rural life in Japan via dozens of conversations with aging fishermen, multi-generational inn owners, farmers, and kissaten cafe “mamas.” Along the way, Mod communes with mountain fauna, marvels over evidence of bears and boars, and hopscotches around leeches. He encounters whispering priests and foul-mouthed little kids who ask him, “Just what the heck are you, anyway?” Through sharp prose and his curious archive of photographs, he records evidence of floods and tsunamis, the disappearance of village life on the peninsula, and the capricious fecundity of nature.
Things Become Other Things blends memoir and travel writing at their best, transporting readers to an otherwise inaccessible Japan, one made visible only through Mod’s unique bicultural lens.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Photographer Mod (Kissa by Kissa) delivers a gorgeous account of his 300-mile walk around Japan's Kii peninsula in 2021. After writing several books about the art of long-distance walking, Mod resolved to traverse Kii during a Covid lockdown. Along the way, he tuned into changes the landscape had undergone, reflected on his move from America to Japan at 19, and unlocked buried memories of a childhood friend who died young. While passing through Ise Grand Shrine and a series of fishing villages, Mod discusses crumbling economies and extreme weather with locals who've lived in the region for decades. He eats and sometimes stays at kissas—small, family-run cafes and boarding houses—where the owners lament their dwindling business as Japan's rural population declines. Throughout, Mod's dedication to seeking out ippon-ura (roads less traveled) helps him achieve his goal of conducting "real-time observation of unfiltered life." Punctuated with stunning black and white photographs of the villages and landscapes Mod encountered, this tender exploration of fragile ecosystems and vanishing ways of life will encourage readers to look more closely at their own surroundings. It's a nourishing trek. Photos.
