December Reading Log ①

○ 1st Book: "Murder for the Sake of Capital Punishment" by The Yomiuri Shimbun Tokyo Headquarters

Normal, normal, normal.
Words that appeared in this book over and over again.
Normally people think this, normally people do that.
Whether or not the person committed a heinous crime,
the moment you try to judge them by applying "normal" standards,
I think you stop seeing anything about the other person.

Reporters running around trying to make the perpetrator feel remorse.
They believe that doing so
will lead to atonement for the bereaved families.
Does making someone feel remorse really count as atonement?

In the first place, since the former death row inmate Kanagawa was arrested,
the fly-by-night reporters who approached him out of curiosity probably couldn't change anything.

Even if you call Kanagawa shallow or a naked king,
that is the worldview he lived in.
The information gathered by investigating his past
is objective,
but the 24 years leading up to the incident he caused
are something only he can understand.
No matter how much reporting you do,
you cannot know the subjective truth.
I felt that wanting to "change" him
when you don't even understand him is what's truly shallow.

While reading this,
Keigo Higashino's "Letters" came to mind.
The fact that for both the victim's family and the perpetrator's family,
it "never ends."

○ 2nd Book: "The Best Way to Bathe" by Shinya Hayasaka

I love baths and hot springs,
and I especially prefer soaking in very hot water.
However, in this book, I learned that water over 42°C
generates histamine, an itch-inducing substance, and that the sympathetic nervous system kicks in,
preventing a smooth transition to the parasympathetic nervous system,
which means it causes autonomic nervous system imbalance.
Because of that, I immediately put it into practice
and have been bathing at 40°C lately.
It's a temperature where you start to feel cold if you soak for more than 30 minutes,
but the itching has certainly gone away.
I want to go to a hot spring again during this season.

○ 3rd Book: "Habits for Making Things Work by Coming to Terms with Your Heart" by Tsuneko Nakamura / Hiromi Okuda

It was good.
Thoroughly separating yourself from others
might indeed be the secret to making everything go well. And, the sense of distance.
The fact that no matter how far you go, people are alone.
That we are lonely.
It contained many tips on ways of thinking to avoid getting tangled up in human relationships.

Even if you have that kind of mindset,
it must be painful if someone very close to you
forces their personal views on you with verbal or physical abuse,
or if you are in a situation where you have no choice but to stay in an environment bound by such values.
Especially in parent-child relationships.