Mitsunaka Nobuhiro, "Memories of the Bookshelf"

“The style of this book, in which the 'restaurant owner' and the 'bookworm' each write alternately as separate personalities, seemed incompatible, but once I started writing, it progressed surprisingly smoothly. The threads of 'food' and 'books' were supposed to be separate, yet points of contact emerged where they intertwined and sometimes crossed. Eating and reading, for me, as a single person, are ultimately proof of a combined 'madness.'” (From the "Afterword" of this book)

Nobuhiro Minaka, an evolutionary biologist who studies living things from the perspectives of statistics and systematics, is a "bookworm" who has previously authored "books about books," guiding readers on how to build their own knowledge system based on his experience devouring books and literature from all ages and genres. At the same time, recalling his student days when he self-taught (through trial and error) cooking in his dorm kitchen for himself and his friends, he named his own kitchen "Minaka Shokudo" (Minaka Eatery) and has recorded and published recipes for the dishes he creates there.
This book is a unique collection of essays, written alternately by the author, a researcher and chef, tracing his life through memories from his upbringing in Kyoto to his student days in Tokyo and his research life in Tsukuba, along with the words from books linked to each memory, and the memories of food that shaped him, combined with his long culinary experience and the recipes born from it. With a light, Kyoto-esque prose, the numerous book memories cited, from classical to modern essays, are not only encyclopedic but also evoke a rich world of literature and words that permeate a single person's being as knowledge and wisdom. The dense, deeply personal food memories and 45 hand-drawn recipes, which feel as if they are being directly passed from the author to the reader, will surely evoke memories of books and food for each reader.

Eating and reading. These two activities, which have separately shaped him as a person and as a biological being, are, in the sense that they reflect the "uniqueness" of his birth and upbringing, perhaps rooted in the same thing. This book offers an opportunity to re-encounter food and reading—topics that are increasingly difficult to approach outside of self-help and "How-to" formats—through the accumulation of another person's life and its trivial events. This is the second installment in Tokosha's "Books and Life" series.