Japan Lights by Iain Maloney

 Japan Lights by Iain Maloney





Japan Lights by Iain Maloney is published in 2023 by Tippermuir Books. My thanks to the author and publisher for sending me a copy to review and to Love Book Tours for inviting me to take part on the tour.



Synopsis

In 2017, holed up in a hotel room, feverish, despondent and aimless, Iain Maloney chances upon an article about Richard Henry Brunton, a Victorian civil engineer unknown in his Scottish homeland but considered ‘The Father of Japanese Lighthouses’ in Japan. With more than twenty of his lighthouses still in use today, Maloney sets out with newfound purpose to visit them all.

Part travel memoir, part history,


The Japan Lights visits isolated regions of rural Japan, discovering compelling stories from its past. Maloney witnesses the lingering trauma of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, and comes to a new understanding of the precariousness of life on a planet that is 71 per cent water. On the way he explores the paradox of Brunton, a flawed human being whose work saved hundreds of thousands of lives and made the seas around Japan safer for all.







My Review


This is a really informative book about Iain's, and at times his long suffering wife Minori's, journey around the lighthouses in Japan that were designed by the Scot, Richard Henry Brunton. From the minute he starts by explaining what it was like to see the turmoil and devastation caused by the Boxing Day Tsunami and how he felt uncomfortable as an observer of the aftermath, to then moving onto his travels around the twenty remaining Brunton lighthouses, this is a captivating and historically informative read. There are many points of humour along the way which lighten the load of just moving on from one lighthouse to the next, though the superb illustrations by Rob Hands make this trip all the more worthwhile.

There were also some telling insights into the Japanese way of life and their issue with people of different ethnicity which I found quite telling and I could understand why Iain and Steve were uncomfortable with this , whilst appreciating that at the same time realising that it is not seen as an issue in Japanese culture.

The chapters are short and informative and allow the reader to build up an understanding of the lighthouses and their past and it is certainly helpful to have the map at the front of the book so that you can place where they are on the coastline.

I thoroughly enjoyed this easy, humorous and informative book and look forward to reading more from Iain in the future.



About the Author





Iain Maloney is the author of the critically acclaimed The Only Gaijin in the Village (Birlinn, 2020), a memoir about his life in rural Japan. He has also published three novels and a collection of poetry.

In 2013, he was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize and in 2014 he was shortlisted for The Guardian ‘Not The Booker Prize’. He is a freelance editor and journalist, mainly for The Japan Times. 

Iain was born and raised in Aberdeen, Scotland and he currently lives in Japan. He studied English at the University of Aberdeen and graduated from the University of Glasgow’s Creative Writing Masters in 2004.

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