Tabibito (the Traveller) Book

Tabibito is the autobiography of physicist Hideki Yukawa up to the mid thirties when he publishes his theory of mesons. The style is very sparse, slightly meditative, and straightforwards. This may just be his style or it could be something characteristically Japanese, I am not well versed enough to know. It put me in a rather contemplative mood rather than being engrossed his life, which is admittedly rather unexciting though the book is short and doesn't sag. Whilst it is uncouth to diagnose from a distance, Yukawa is clearly in some sense autistic, and this colours his interactions with people as he grows up in Taisho Japan. I found it a good evocation of the period. What was interesting to me was to see his interest in literature and then foreign literature, and then also the learning of foreign languages from an early age with a specific goal of understanding science from abroad. Whilst many people learn foreign languages in school when young, that this would be the explicit aim gives me some appreciation of the desire to catch up with the West that was brought forth with the opening of the country in Meiji.