How Do You Live?

A simple story based on a young boy's experiences navigating friendships & life. His uncle writes him letters & notebook pages of sage life advice which help him learn to act on his feelings in a way that respects himself & others.
The story explores collectivism, class, values, ethics, and what it means to be a good friend.
A little preachy at times, but always relatable & mostly down-to-earth, it's surprising this book can still feel fresh and current almost 90 years after it was written.
Think of it in the vein of Rilke's Letters to A Young Poet, with a moralistic intent of something like The Alchemist or The Little Prince but with the classroom & schoolfriends as protagonists.
I'm curious to see how Hayao Miyazaki will adapt it for a feature length animation; whether he will flesh the story out or add to it, or keep it simple. There is no magical or folkloric element to the story so I suspect it will be more in the realist interpersonal style of From Up On Poppy Hill in contrast to films like Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, or Howl's Moving Castle.

I enjoyed the concept of how Copper shares letters with his uncle as he maneuvers through life. The connection between the movie The Boy and the Heron is visible in some parts of the story. I think I'm a little conflicted by the amount of history included, which takes up quite a lot of the story. I think I might enjoy it more in its original text as the translation was as impactful as I thought it would be.

A cosy and cute read full of life lessons that I can imagine that some people won't like very much. But it made me feel very nostalgic and there are some things I still need to reflect on and think about.
You get a sweet little story about a boy in Japan but at the same you get these like essays on life too that are there to help that boy with some of the things he faces and make you think about how about your own life a lot. I could relate to it a lot because the difficulties Copper faces are things that everyone most likely has faced at one point in there lives before.
This story also made me so emotional and still does thinking about it. I will cherish this book forever and I am so happy I read it.

Copper's father has died and it is his beloved uncle who has been asked by his father to guide Copper through adolescence and into adulthood. To do this, Copper's uncle keeps a journal of his thoughts about important things and Copper and his uncle have long conversations together.

Copper experiences lots of trials. After a particularly difficult trial, Copper finds that “...he had become keenly aware that a person's conduct was made up of actions that, once done, could not be undone, and that was a truly scary thing. Even if nobody else knew what you'd done, you yourself knew, and what's more, even if you could somehow forget completely, once you'd done a thing, there was no changing that fact.”

Copper's mother, too, helps him work through difficulties. As Copper is trying to figure out what to do after an especially hard situation, Copper's mother tells him:

“...if your regrets help you to really learn an essential thing about being human, that experience won't have been wasted on you. Your life afterward, thanks to that, will be better and stronger than it was before. Jun'ichi, that's the only way for a person to become great.”

Later his uncle writes in his journal to Copper: “As we move through our lives as human beings, all of us, young and old, encounter sadness, hardship, and pain, each in our own way. Of course these are not things anyone wishes for. But it is thanks to sadness, hardship, and pain that we come to know what a true human being is.”

This is a story of a thoughtful young man who is guided by his equally thoughtful uncle and mother, who is not without mistakes, but who uses his difficult experiences to become a better person.

And the ending: “And now I think I want to ask all of you a question. How will you live?”