For the second month running I’m recommending a story with a feline central character but the two books couldn’t be more different. Inges was a long baroque novel set in a dark and violent period of British history. The Cat Who Saved Books (2017) by Sosuke Natsukawa is short, delicate and set in modern Japan. The English translation by Louise Heal Kawai is available as an ebook and the paperback will be out in September but this is a novel which cries out to be enjoyed in the beautiful hardback edition.

In the first sentence of The Cat Who Saved Books we learn that reclusive high-school student Rintaro Natsuki has recently lost his beloved grandfather. He had gone to live with his grandfather after his mother died and now he feels alone in the world. An unknown aunt from a distant city is going to take charge of him after his grandfather’s bookshop, Natsuki Books, has been sold. This tiny shop is stocked with lovingly chosen second-hand copies of classics of world literature. Rintaro stops going to school and refuses to move from the bookshop. He thinks of himself as friendless, but two pupils from his high-school – popular older boy Akiba and bossy class-representative, Sayo – visit to check on him. Rintaro remains paralysed by grief.

Things only begin to change when the bookshop has a very unusual visitor in the form of a jade-eyed ginger tabby called Tiger. Rintaro is startled to find that this cat can talk to him. Tiger has business with the new proprietor of Natsuki Books and demands that Rintaro go on a quest to rescue some imprisoned books. Rintaro initially thinks that he is hallucinating, especially when a book-lined tunnel opens up in what is normally the back wall of the shop. He follows Tiger through the tunnel and a blinding white light into the garden of a magnificent mansion. It is only then that Tiger warns Rintaro that he will never get back to his bookshop unless he can rescue the imprisoned books from the obsessive collector who lives in the mansion.

This is the first of four magical adventures in which Rintaro travels through bewildering labyrinths to confront people who misuse books. In the second adventure, Rintaro and Tiger are accompanied by Sayo when they visit a man who is cutting up books to reduce them to their essence. The third adventure takes them to World’s Best Books, a cynical firm whose policy is to treat books as expendable goods and only publish what people want to read. Rintaro struggles to tell truth from lies and to impart his deep love of literature to others. Just when he seems to have succeeded a fourth adversary kidnaps Sayo and challenges everything Rintaro believes in. Can shy Rintaro stand up for the power of books and make a new future for himself?

I have long been fascinated by the history and culture of Japan and share the Japanese love for cats. I can thoroughly recommend two other sensitive, cat-centred Japanese novels – The Guest Cat (2015) by Takashi Hiraide and The Travelling Cat Chronicles (2017) by Hiro Arikawa. Impatient, straight-talking Tiger, whose gender isn’t specified in Japanese, is a notable addition to my list of literary felines. Another thing I admire about modern Japanese culture is that Fantasy novels, films and TV series are enjoyed by people of all ages and genders. The leading characters in The Cat Who Saved Books may still be at school but that doesn’t mean that it is aimed exclusively at a Young Adult audience. This gentle, intellectual book would have been unlikely to find a publisher in Europe or America if it hadn’t already been a huge success in Japan where there is a strong market for Fantasy fiction with serious themes.

The excellent translator of The Cat Who Saved Books leaves a few words in Japanese because it is difficult to find exact equivalents. The most important of these is the term Rintaro uses to describe himself – hikikomori. Sometimes translated as `shut-in’ it refers to young people (mainly male) who choose to shut themselves away from society. Sadly, hikikomori is a word that other cultures now need. Most shut-ins immerse themselves in on-line worlds but Rintaro loses himself in printed books. Natsukawa is careful to show that book-lovers aren’t all socially inept recluses – handsome basket-ball player Akiba is also into serious reading. In other countries grieving Rintaro might be seen as a case for professional Social Workers or Mental Health services but in Japan helping him is the responsibility of family, friends, neighbours and class-mates. Strong-minded Sayo doesn’t just bring Rintaro his homework, she tries to get him to engage with society again. Rintaro doesn’t do this by abandoning reading but by using what he has learned from books to help others; a process kick-started by his magical adventures.

These adventures aren’t of a standard Fantasy kind – there are no monsters to be slain or epic battles to be fought – and I’m not going to pretend that The Cat Who Saved Books is thrill-a-minute stuff. What you will discover in these pages are memorably surreal images such as a man in a white coat cutting up books with scissors as he listens to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or a publisher’s headquarters surrounded by a blizzard of discarded books. Our reluctant hero, Rintaro, has no magical weapons to help him – just his own wits and the values his grandfather passed on to him. He has to save books and win safety for himself and his companions by sheer force of argument. His ideas change people’s lives but not entirely for the better and that is a consequence Rintaro has to learn to live with.

Japan has a rich heritage of literature and there is a good argument for saying that female Japanese authors such as the brilliant Murasaki Shikibu invented the novel in the Heian Period (794-1185 CE). So it rather surprised me at first that the authors read and praised by Rintaro are mainly Western. Gradually it became clear that Natsukawa is arguing that one of the main purposes of literature is to build empathy but to do this you need to read and write about people who aren’t exactly like yourself. That’s an idea that goes against current Western thinking, which is another good reason for trying this book. On the surface I have little in common with a shut-in male Japanese teenager but Natsukawa really made me feel for Rintaro and love his bookshop. As I write this, a small independent bookshop has just bravely opened in my hometown of Cheltenham (see www.rossiterbooks.co.uk). So, I appeal to everyone following Fantasy Reads to cherish shops run by and for booklovers. Until next time…