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JapanVisitor.com Review of "Way of the Baby: A Book of Five Grins"
 
Way of the Baby: Secrets of Mastering the Parent is another book that seeks to tap into the Eastern or Japanese “way,” the path that dictates form and brings enlightenment. This small book, though, is not devoted to flower arranging or a martial art but rather how to raise a parent. Western readers seeking ways of understanding their little of bundle of joy may experience that “a-ha” moment of recognition when reading this text. The original text was written by Seiya Kuramoto, a seventeenth-century samurai from Gunma, Japan. It documents how babies come to master their parents. It is divided into five sections: The Earth Book, The Water Book, The Fire Book, The Wind Book, and The Book of the Void. At the end The Earth Book section, there is a list of nine main principles. For example, in The Earth Book, #5 is “a toy appears more interesting in the hand of another.” And, so indeed it does. And, so indeed will all parents nod in recognition. This book is thus a How To aimed at the pre-literate set. Parents are thus left to disseminate and consider how the little one is progressing in its domination of the household. The translation appears fairly literal. This is not criticism, but rather a comment on the organization of the text, which, like Japanese prose, allows for and encourages digression. To some Western readers, this may be disconcerting at first. If you go with the flow of the book as a whole, you will enjoy it.
  - Curtis Ogawa
  JapanVisitor.com Book Reviews
 
 
 

 
 
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