Just Something About LynLyn

The Great Passage (2011)

By Shion Miura

The Great Passage is a Japanese contemporary novel written by Shion Miura and translated into English by Juliet Winters Carpenter. This book is a feel-good story for people who enjoy the power of words.

The novel centers on publishing a fictional Japanese dictionary called The Great Passage. Kohei Araki recruits the kind and introverted young man from the sales department, Mitsuya Majime to be the new chief editor of The Great Passage. With the help of the former Chief of the Dictionary Editorial Department, Kohei Araki, Professor Tomosuke Matsumoto, and other dictionary contributors, Majime has produced a well-detailed dictionary over ten years.

While working on The Great Passage, we see several characters develop their identities and showcase their appreciation of the Japanese language and linguistics. For example, at the beginning of the story, Majime feels that he is unqualified to take on the role of editor for a new dictionary. Slowly, he gained confidence in speaking his mind and showed determination to get the dictionary published in his lifetime.

The novel doesn’t have many characters, but two supporting characters provide amusement to this story, Masashi Nishioka and Midori Kishibe. These two characters did not understand Majime’s love for words, but when working on the dictionary they gained an appreciation of Majime’s work. In addition, they were amused by Majime’s “serious, but cheesy” love letter to Kaguya.

The Great Passage is a feel-good novel. By the end of the novel, you feel some satisfaction towards the hard work and dedication these characters put into producing a dictionary. I didn’t realize how much work goes into dictionary production until reading this book and it gave me an appreciation for how we use words to communicate and convey emotions. The novel emphasizes that the dictionary is a sea of words and humans travel on ships in this sea of words to communicate. I thought that was a powerful way to look at words and how we communicate.

There’s an anime and live-action series for this novel. I may watch the anime in the future, but I feel content with just reading the novel.

4/5