Rating: Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4.5/5)
I picked up The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park for two reasons: I loved Aoyama’s earlier work (What You Are Looking for Is in the Library), and I’m a sucker for alliteration. The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park. Say it three times fast. It rolls off the tongue like a children’s story, which is funny because this book will gut-punch you with its gentle wisdom about adult disappointment.
Here’s the premise: Kabahiko is a weathered playground hippo in a Tokyo suburb. Touch the part of his body that corresponds to what hurts on yours, and he’ll heal you. Except—spoiler—the hippo doesn’t actually heal anyone. The people do. Through vulnerability, conversation, and the awkward grace of showing up.
Five Reasons This Book Will Stay With You (Even If You’re Skeptical About Whimsy)
1. It Nails the Specific Humiliation of Being Average
Kanato used to be the smartest kid in his suburban school. Then his family moved closer to Tokyo, and suddenly he’s ranking 35th out of 42 students. He forges his exam results because he can’t bear to tell his parents he’s drowning.
I felt this in my bones. That moment when you realize you’re playing at a level far beyond your capabilities, and your XP is stuck at 10. Kanato’s story isn’t about becoming brilliant again. It’s about learning that rankings only matter “for people confined inside their tiny world”—a line delivered by his classmate Shizukuda, who works part-time at an okonomiyaki restaurant and still finds time to be kind.
2. It Captures the Weird Loneliness of New Motherhood
Sawa was an award-winning retail assistant. Now she’s a stay-at-home mom being frozen out by the kindergarten mom clique because her daughter supposedly laughed at another kid during piano class.
Aoyama writes the small cruelties of parenting culture with precision: the mom who muscles her way into your home, the committee meetings where someone decides sellers should buy their own unsold bazaar items (because her stuff always sells), the slow erosion of your voice when you’re not earning money.
Sawa’s healing comes when she finds the courage to speak up at a meeting. It’s not a revolution. It’s permission to exist again.
3. It Understands That Anxiety Is Just Imagination Pointed in the Wrong Direction
Chiharu is a wedding planner with Eustachian tube dysfunction—her ears echo constantly, probably from stress. She’s been outpaced at work by a colleague who closes deals faster. She’s taken leave. She spends her days lying in bed at her parents’ house. She feels guilty because they’re both teachers while she’s accomplished nothing. Then she discovers the colleague she’s in love with is marrying the woman who made Chiharu feel inadequate.
The line that wrecked me: “I think anxiety is evidence of a powerful imagination.” Said by the lady who runs Sunrise Cleaning, Kabahiko’s biggest believer. What if your worst-case scenarios are just proof you’re creative?
4. It’s About the Courage to Be Seen Failing
Yuya fakes a foot injury to avoid a relay race. Then his foot actually starts hurting. He’s given conflicting advice for treatment. He’s told that the cause of his pain is a disconnect between his mind, body, and heart—that he’s resisting something.
What he’s resisting: being laughed at. He’d rather be invisible than risk public failure. Yuya realizes that his fear of humiliation has been running his life.
5. It Asks: What If You’ve Been Avoiding the People You Need Most?
Kazuhiko, the editor-in-chief of a magazine, moved back to his childhood neighborhood to be near his aging mother. They’re estranged. She’s suffocating. He’s resentful. When she collapses from exhaustion, she refuses to stay at his house.
He realizes: “Maybe my mother had a habit of distancing herself from people she needed. Because she was afraid of placing her hopes in others, scared of hurting both herself and them.”
The healing isn’t grand. It’s so small it’s almost nothing. Yet, it’s everything.
What Makes Aoyama Different from Other “Cozy” Writers
If you read What You Are Looking For Is In The Library, you know Aoyama loves the idea of wise mentors guiding lost souls. That book had a magical librarian who prescribed books like medicine.
The Healing Hippo is less tidy. There’s no all-knowing guide. The hippo is a placeholder, an excuse for people to show up to the same place and start talking. The healing happens between equals—awkwardly, tentatively, with no guarantee it’ll work.Less about epiphany, more about the soft revolution of routine and showing up.
Who Should Read This
You should read this if:
- You’ve ever felt like an imposter in a room full of people who seem to belong
- You’re tired of irony and cynicism masquerading as intelligence
- You want to believe that small gestures—lending someone a manga, suggesting a yoga class, running a race even if you’re slow—can matter
- You need proof that community isn’t dead, just harder to find
Who Shouldn’t Read This
Skip it if:
- You want messy, complex plots with twists you don’t see coming
- Literary minimalism feels like a cop-out to you
- You think “cozy” means “toothless” and you’re not wrong
- You’re allergic to optimism, even the hard-won kind
Final Thoughts: Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy
I related to every character’s struggle, even though I’m not a Japanese teenager or a new mother or a wedding planner. That’s the universality Aoyama captures—the ordinary agony of everyday existence, and the ordinary grace that sometimes shows up to meet it.
Critics might call this book simplistic. They’re not entirely wrong. But sometimes the answer is the simplest thing. That doesn’t make it easy.
Touch the hippo. Talk to your neighbor. Show up even when you’re scared. The healing isn’t in the hippo. It’s in the showing up.
📚 Want more honest book reviews that skip the literary posturing? Subscribe to get new posts delivered straight to your inbox. No fluff, no spoilers, just real talk about what makes stories stick.
Have you read The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park? What did you think? Drop a comment below—I’d love to hear if you’re team “gentle wisdom” or team “needs more edge.”
jujucation.com 