Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Travel & holiday

WATER, WOOD, AND WILD THINGS

Hannah Kirshner

Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town

An immersive journey through the culture and cuisine of one Japanese town, its forest, and its watershed--where ducks are hunted by net, saké is brewed from the purest mountain water, and charcoal is fired in stone kilns--by an American writer and food stylist who spent years working alongside artisans.

One night, Brooklyn-based artist and food writer Hannah Kirshner received a life-changing invitation to apprentice with a "saké evangelist" in a misty Japanese mountain village called Yamanaka. In a rapidly modernizing Japan, the region--a stronghold of the country's old-fashioned ways--was quickly becoming a destination for chefs and artisans looking to learn about the traditions that have long shaped Japanese culture. Kirshner put on a vest and tie and took her place behind the saké bar. Before long, she met a community of craftspeople, farmers, and foragers--master woodturners, hunters, a paper artist, and a man making charcoal in his nearly abandoned village on the outskirts of town. Kirshner found each craftsperson not only exhibited an extraordinary dedication to their work but their distinct expertise contributed to the fabric of the local culture. Inspired by these masters, she devoted herself to learning how they work and live.

Taking readers deep into evergreen forests, terraced rice fields, and smoke-filled workshops, Kirshner captures the centuries-old traditions still alive in Yamanaka. Water, Wood, and Wild Things invites readers to see what goes into making a fine bowl, a cup of tea, or a harvest of rice and introduces the masters who dedicate their lives to this work.
Part travelogue, part meditation on the meaning of work, and full of her own beautiful drawings and recipes, Kirshner's refreshing book is an ode to a place and its people, as well as a profound examination of what it means to sustain traditions and find purpose in cultivation and craft.

Hannah Kirshner is a writer, artist, and food stylist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Saveur, Taste, Food52, Marie Claire, and Atlas Obscura, among others. Trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, Kirshner grew up on a small farm outside Seattle and divides her time between Brooklyn and rural Japan.

Available products
Book Published 2021-03-23 by Viking

Comments

Hannah Kirshner depicts Yamanaka, its landscape, its people (and the things they make) with intimate feeling and lucid focus. Water, Wood, and Wild Things is exquisitely attentive - a lovely and special book.

In her engaging narrative, Water, Wood, and Wild Things, Hannah Kirshner conveys the essence of Japan's rapport with nature that continues to shape craft, community and the culinary arts. Her lyric sketchbook provides a glimpse of a mountain town in transition, nurtured by the past while accepting (considered) change.

How does one engage ethically with a culture not their own? Kirshner offers one possible way. Her humility, curiosity, and dedication shine through in the accuracy and honesty of her discussions of historical contexts and the privilege she enjoys as a white American woman in Japan. Kirshner listened, and allowed me to hear the voices of Yamanaka's people, who are recreating traditions every day.

If you have a yearning (as I do) to go to Japan and do exactly what Hannah did (without the mountain biking), you will be very grateful for her essays on life among the craftspeople of a small town. Hannah transports you to a place of serenity and beauty, where moments of exquisite wonder pervade. With this book, you feel you can stop time and savor the rituals of life.

Kirshner's beautifully illustrated and worded depiction of Japanese craft is artfully grounded in nature's four seasons alongside meticulous food preparation rituals. With each turn of the page, you can almost hear Kirshner sliding open yet another wooden paneled door to reveal a shokunin who refuses to let their craft fade. Water, Wood, and Wild Things wonderfully brings a myriad of haptic, visual, and aromatic taste sensations of Japan that individually tantalize within a perfect dashi broth of storytelling.

In Kirshner's explorations and excavations, we navigate the pulls of place and identity - Water, Wood, and Wild Things settles us into Yamanaka, and alongside the folks who live there. Kirshner is both participant and observer, humbly and tactfully weaving a portrait of a history, its mores, and how they've changed. But, above all, she listens - allowing the community to tell their story, and allowing us to view the tapestry she's painted alongside them. Water, Wood, and Wild Things is a trove and a boon - we can't help but feel grateful that Kirshner brought us along for the journey.