A review by maises
Run With the Wind by Shion Miura

5.0

“Even when we think we’ve reached the goal, there’s always something beyond it.”

This is a book about running. It is also not. In Miura’s words, lovingly translated by Yui Kajita, “This moment was his and his alone. It’s a world only I can experience, as long as I keep running.” In essence, this is a story on loneliness, and the strength it takes to turn that loneliness into something that revolves around contentment, joy, and love. Run with the Wind is at times too honest and open about its dreams, even romantic, but it isn’t impractical. It’s so hopeful that it scares me.

There is much emphasis here on why Kakeru and all his friends like to run even when it hurts and even when there is no direct benefit to keep going. The metaphor is not so difficult to understand, nor is the reason so metaphysical: they experience a real runner’s high occasionally, and even in a rarer case, something vaguely described as being in the “zone,” in which the body achieves near-inhuman feats with little thinking involved. Strength in body and in mind are huge benefits to long-distance running. They are, probably, the only things to it. But what Miura means by strength and how to pursue it is a struggle all the characters in Run with the Wind deal with internally, rather than physically.

Out of nowhere, Kakeru remembered a snow-covered field he'd seen when he was little. He woke up early one morning and went to a field in the neighborhood to discover the familiar landscape completely transformed by the snow that had settled overnight. Kakeru ran across the fresh, untouched expanse of white. Letting his heart guide him, he ran to make pretty patterns on the snow. That was the first time in his life that he felt joy in running.

Maybe strength was something beautiful that stood poised in a subtle balance, like the patterns on the snow he'd drawn that day.

Miura doesn’t need any complex messaging, because running itself as an activity is not actually complex. Everything is laid out in front of you: you just have to make it. The message, overall, is that running is difficult. It is difficult and it it is done anyway. In the same vein, life is difficult—so are people and one’s relationships with them—but all of it is dealt with one way or another, because life moves linearly and you get somewhere regardless of whether you run or crawl. 

Running may be done alone, but the strength needed to run is drawn from all different facets of your life, most notably from the people you love and support you in turn (both in terms of the physical activity and also the very obviously metaphorical one).

Now he knew that running didn’t have to be isolating. Despite being a solitary act, running had the power to connect people, to make them bond in the truest sense of the word. […] To run was to be strong. Strength wasn’t speed; rather, it lay in the runner’s capacity to connect with others while maintaining a sense of solitude.

I needed this book. It was a reprieve to read something this slow (ironically) and I liked being forced to take a breath alongside every lovable character. Their joys were mine. Kajita was able to translate Miura’s prose without compromising how she built her atmospheres or  characterizations. There were some scenes in the book so silly and funny and heartfelt that I think my heart may have grown three sizes, Grinch-style. I wish to read more of Shion Miura’s works now, and possibly even Yui Kajita’s in the future.