I came across a book by Kenta Nagakura titled “People Who Move Around Succeed” at a bookstore, and decided to read it.
In this post, I’d like to share my impressions.
“People Who Move Around Succeed” by Kenta Nagakura
Overall impressions
First of all, this book is remarkably easy to read. I say that because I’ve never been much of a reader and I’m a fairly slow one at that, yet I got through this book with surprising ease.
It usually takes me two or three days to finish about 200 pages, and quite often I lose interest partway through and give up altogether.
This book, though, I managed to finish in about three hours in total.
Personally, I was pretty amazed.
I’ll try to avoid spoiling the content, but conveying my impressions requires introducing at least a minimum of it, so if you want to read the book with fresh eyes, you may want to skip this post.
Centered on its keyword, “movement,” the book essentially says: “If you want to change your life, get moving!!!” (to put it far too simply)
As the author himself notes in the preface, these ideas won’t be accepted by everyone, and criticism is surely to be expected.
Still, I found them relatable, and since this is one valid way to live, I think it will resonate strongly with the right readers.
There’s nothing dubious about the content; it reads as though the author is genuinely putting down what he truly believes.
Also, a common failing of self-help books is that they tell you what you should do but say little about how to actually pull it off. This book has very little of that problem.
Precisely because it gives a solid answer to “So what do I do starting tomorrow?”, I think many readers will come away feeling glad they read it.
Where I agree and where I differ
The book has six chapters, and my personal take is that I largely agree with all of them except Chapter 4, where I found quite a few points I couldn’t fully accept.
Chapters 1 through 3 were written in a genuinely clear and accessible way.
(What follows may come across as presumptuous, so please bear with me.)
The critical view he takes of the world, and the fact that he writes both from a first-person perspective and from a bird’s-eye view, made the book very easy to follow.
It touches on things we tend to forget in day-to-day life, and his perspective makes you think, “Yes, that’s exactly how it looks from the outside.” It prompted me to reflect on my own situation—whether I should change the life I’m living now, and what I might be missing.
Chapter 4 lays out concretely what one should do, but the content is very much shaped by the author’s own vantage point, and honestly I found it hard to apply to myself.
That said, it’s only hard to apply as-is; you can simply shift your perspective, and if anything it’s more than enough as a prompt to think up other options for yourself.
As for the rest, my impressions are the same as for Chapters 1–3.
My own thoughts after reading
The title makes clear that “movement” is the theme, and the backstory is that the title resonated with me so strongly that I bought the book on the spot at the store.
And the fact that my own thinking is fairly close to the author’s is, I think, one reason the book was such an easy read for me.
You could call it a critique of living a conventional life.
My own motto is that I want to live an enjoyable life and not the same life as everyone else, so I hope to live in a way that somehow avoids falling into the conventional mold.
It’s something everyone has thought about at least once, and probably acted on at some point—but it made me think that our social structures and culture make it hard to do.
Lately I’ve been questioning whether that’s actually good or bad.
Books on how to succeed, to put it bluntly, tend to say that Japanese culture is hopeless, so go abroad! And that we should aim to break free from being pacified and kept in line, I suppose.
This book is more logical, and of course doesn’t go so far as to say what I described above.
Still, in the end, it does seem to suggest that breaking away from being an ordinary person is the path to success.
And that’s probably true.
So-called successful people are a minority, so becoming one requires breaking away from the majority.
That said, it’s also a fact that society functions thanks to the culture and mindset of that majority.
Why is Japan so safe? Why is general education so widely shared?
I think it’s precisely because of the way Japan is—its culture, its systems, its ways of thinking.
That’s why, although we tend to focus only on how Japan compares unfavorably with other countries, I’ve recently come to realize that there must be reasons things turned out this way, and advantages that come from it.
In the book, the author also says that living abroad allowed him to see both the good and bad of Japan and the good and bad of other countries.
It’s obvious, but it’s the kind of thing we easily forget.
Rating
My rating for this book is
★★★★☆
.
To change your life, the first step is learning that such a way of thinking exists.
On that basis, this book is very easy to understand, and I think it also lays out guidelines for what to do next.
That said, for people who don’t want to change their lives, the information may not be necessary.
Since I can’t quite recommend it to everyone, I personally settled on four stars.
It’s a very good book, and I personally enjoyed reading it a great deal.
