In 2017, holed up in a hotel room, feverish, despondent and
aimless, Iain Maloney chances upon an article about Richard
Henry Brunton, a Victorian civil engineer unknown in his
Scottish homeland but considered ‘The Father of Japanese
Lighthouses’ in Japan. With more than twenty of his
lighthouses still in use today, Maloney sets out with newfound
purpose to visit them all.
Part travel memoir, part history, The Japan Lights visits
isolated regions of rural Japan, discovering compelling stories
from its past. Maloney witnesses the lingering trauma of the
2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, and comes
to a new understanding of the precariousness of life on a
planet that is 71 per cent water. On the way he explores the
paradox of Brunton, a flawed human being whose work
saved hundreds of thousands of lives and made the seas
around Japan safer for all. |
