First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther. Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.

Synopsis:

Tucked away on the fifth floor of an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can be found only by people who are struggling in their lives and who genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way there: it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take” their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, and occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.

Throughout these pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a hardened handbag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha learns to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic’s patients grapple with their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.

Happy Friday everyone! Well, technically it is already Saturday so happy weekend everyone! Nevertheless, we made it through yet another work week. I hope everyone completed all the tasks they started at the beginning of the week. I hope everyone ends the work week on a high note and jumps into the weekend worry-free. This also means that we are already halfway through February. How time flies! How has your 2025 been? I hope that it is going great. I hope you got a headstart on your goals and that you are on the way to achieving them. If the year went otherwise, I hope you experience a reversal of fortune in the coming months. I hope that 2025 will be a year of prayers answered, healing, and dreams achieved. More importantly, I hope everyone will be healthy in body, mind, and spirit.

Before I could dive fully into the weekend, let me share a fresh First Impression Friday update which has, over the years, been a workweek-ender for me. It is integral in my book blogging ritual which initially is a space for me to reflect on the book I was reading. It eventually developed into a springboard upon which I built my book reviews. Writing my impressions about a book before I complete it allows me to compare my initial impressions with how it ultimately made me feel. To open my 2025 reading year, I have been immersing myself in the works of East Asian writers. The foremost reason for this foray into East Asian literature was my inability to host a Japanese Literature Month in 2024; a Japanese literature month has been a staple of my reading year since 2020. Han Kang’s Nobel Prize in Literature recognition is another driver for this decision. Third, an older work by Han, We Do Not Part was released in English last month; I just received my copy of the book and can’t wait to read it.

In the vast ambit of world literature, Japanese literature has been a comfort zone for me. It has, over the years, become my, if not one of my favorite literatures. My current read, Syou Ishida’s We’ll Prescribe You A Cat, is already the seventh book written by a Japanese writer I read this year. However, before 2024, I had not encountered the Japanese writer nor had I read any of her works before. I have been discovering more Japanese writers lately. This is also true with Korean writers. It seems that the rise of globalization has touched the rest of the literary world. It has not escaped my attention how novels originally written in a language other than English have been filling up the bookstands. I am not complaining though. Rather, I am looking forward to expanding my reading horizon.

Anyway, We’ll Prescribe You A Cat is another cat novel from Japanese literature. Japanese writers certainly have a fondness for the unassuming felines. In fact, I have already read several cat-centric books written by Japanese writers, from Natsume Sōseki’s I Am A Cat (which I consider the father of cat novels) to Hiro Arikawa’s The Travelling Cat Chronicles to Sosuke Natsukawa’s The Cat Who Saved Books. In a way, I already have an inkling about what the book is about. I guess, the book’s title is a giveaway. We’ll Prescribe You A Cat is set in the “old capital” (yeah, Kawabata) Kyoto. Tucked away on the fifth floor of an old building is the Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. I am sure you can pretty much infer what the story is about. The Clinic is not an ordinary clinic. Sure, it has a psychiatrist assisted by a nurse. However, rather than prescribing a medicine, the psychiatrist prescribes a cat.

The people who wind up in the Clinic have mounting and pressing concerns. As such, the Clinic is not accessible to everyone; its location is obscure and one can easily get lost navigating the alleys of the ward where it is located. Enter Shuta, the first patient in the novel. He has had trouble at work. He is in his mid-twenties and is working for a prestigious company. He wanted to quit because of the toxicity that permeated the workplace. Without ado, the psychiatrist prescribed Bee, an eight-year-old cat for Shuta to look after. The crux is that Shuta had no iota about how to look after a pet. Further, he had a week to look after it. With the cat’s presence in his life, there were sudden shifts. Magical? Perhaps. Coincidental? Maybe. As you can also surmise, the novel has some fantastical elements. I am Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series because of the obscurity of the Clinic.

Another Japanese novel that I am reminded of is Michiko Aoyama’s What You Are Looking For Is in the Library because the characters all have concerns but they do not know how to solve them. The psychiatrist just had to look at the individual and listen to their concern before prescribing them a cat. At least this is true in the case of Shuta but I am not going to be surprised if the succeeding stories will be the same as his, structure-wise. Yes, the novel is fragmented, a collection of individual but thematically interconnected stories rather than one straightforward plot. This has certainly become vogue in Japanese literature. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold were written in the same manner.

But therein lies the heart of such stories. They delve into the character’s individual concerns, providing intimate glimpses. The characters are more human rather than caricatures. They are drifters if not in want of a change. Like us, they struggle, and that makes them relatable. This makes novels like We’ll Prescribe You A Cat effective crucibles to convey heartwarming stories. I can’t wait to see the other stories and be lost in the different character’s concerns. I can’t wait to see how cats will figure in their lives as well. This is going to be a quick read and is just perfect for the bleak weather. How about you fellow reader? What book or books have you read over the weekend? I hope you get to enjoy whatever you are reading right now. Happy weekend!