I picked up this book due to the last Miyazaki film. At first, I wasn't sure that there was much relation between these works other than perhaps spirit? But upon finishing, I'm no longer sure and will need to see the film again.

As to the translation, it seems quite beautiful. The descriptions are poetic and succinct. In general, there is an impressive "compression" in the text, where a lot of ideas appear throughout the fairly brief text without cluttering the work. Oddly, the book reminded me of my own times in South Korea as a child - especially Uragawa's character.

The book is concerned about human progress, but it's not a capitalistic kind of progress. In fact the book highlights in many ways how underdeveloped we are in the same way Ivan Illich points out in Tools for Conviviality. Perhaps the flaw of Tools is that it's quite hard to see where to begin - and Illich doesn't really provide a satisfactory answer. In some respects, this book is a manual and we must begin with ourselves, one person at a time.