More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop

Content Warning: This section of the guide incudes discussion of death.

Throughout More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, characters discuss their love of books and their very personal motivations for reading. Each character loves books but is drawn to reading for different reasons related to their pasts and general outlooks toward life. For Takako, her love of reading began in the aftermath of her breakup in Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, when she moved to the bookshop and found solace in the books around her. Now, reading is a way for her to process and explore love: “Reading had started to affect me in ways I hadn’t expected. I had been touched by the kinds of love I read about in books, and that had strengthened my belief that I needed to take my own affections more seriously” (36). Takako’s relationship with reading began because she needed an escape from her heartbreak. She finds comfort in reading stories of love, and it is through these stories that she gains a better understanding of love and the ways in which she can find it in the real world. Takako finds herself changed by what she reads, as it influences her perception of love and the ways in which she interacts with it. As she tries to strengthen her bond with Wada, she finds her desires and beliefs shaped by the love she reads about. Reading becomes not only a balm for pain but also a mirror and map—reflecting her inner emotional landscape and guiding her toward a more open-hearted future.

While Takako reads to help her better understand love and relationships, other characters seek escape in reading. For Tomo, reading is a safe haven through which she can escape the pain and conflict in her everyday life. When Tomo admits to Takako that she once loved her late sister’s boyfriend, she reveals a past riddled with guilt. These sentiments push Tomo to close herself off from love and other people as she tries to protect herself from encountering a similar pain. She uses reading as a way to escape this pressure she places on herself: “When I’m sad, I read. I can go on reading for hours. Reading quiets the turmoil I feel inside and brings me peace. Because when I’m immersed in the world of a book, no one can get hurt” (96). For Tomo, reading is a personal escape through which she not only protects herself but also allows herself the space and time to be removed from the real world. While she reads, she does not have to think about the relationships in her life or the guilt she feels in relation to her love life. For Tomo, the nature of her connection to books is personal in nature, as it reflects her past and needs. Just as Takako needs reading to learn about love, Tomo needs reading to calm down and stabilize her life. Books act as emotional sanctuaries, where she can exert control in a world that once made her feel powerless. This dynamic highlights the novel’s deeper suggestion that reading is a form of both connection and self-preservation—an inner life that sustains its characters through unspoken wounds.

Satoru, too, reflects the personal nature of reading—his passion lies not just in books themselves but in understanding the lives of the people who wrote them. For him, reading is a way of forging invisible connections across time and space. He sees literature as a record of how people lived, suffered, and loved, and through these glimpses, he finds guidance in his own life. The Morisaki Bookshop becomes an extension of this worldview, a space where readers of all kinds gather in quiet pursuit of meaning. Many of the shop’s regulars—like Sabu or the silent “paper bag man”—may not express their motivations aloud, but their routines suggest that reading is a stabilizing ritual. These characters, though lightly sketched, reinforce the idea that every person who steps into the shop brings with them a private relationship with books. In this way, the novel honors the quiet but profound truth that reading is a deeply individual, often transformative act.