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“Mod takes the reader along on an epic, exquisitely detailed journey, on foot, through a rural Japan few of us are likely to experience. Uniquely unforgettable.”

— William Gibson, New York Times bestselling author of Neuromancer

“From its first pages, Things Become Other Things vibrates with energy — a calm charisma. The steady pad of feet on pavement (and wet dirt, and old stones) becomes a backbeat for histories personal and global, observations tiny and profound. Craig Mod's memoir is the quiet road, set one back from the busy artery, that calls to you — maybe there's something interesting that way? Oh boy is there. You'll be glad you took this path.”

— Robin Sloan, bestselling author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, Sourdough, Moonbound

"Mod's highly readable chronicle of a secular pilgrimage through Japan's vanishing rural towns breathes new life into the travelogue while shining a light on the dire need for solace among all who have suffered through the trauma of American violence and social fracture."

— W. David Marx, author of Ametora and Status and Culture

“A meditative travelogue through a part of Japan few outsiders ever see … [Mod’s] account reaches far beyond private reminiscence to become an exemplary travel narrative, instructive and entertaining. Elegant and inspired: just the thing to read along with Basho and other pilgrims into Japan’s back country.”

— Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Craig points his viewfinder at rural Japan, but what develops is a snapshot of the slow, faceless violence that produced so many of us."

— Dexter Thomas, journalist and documentary film maker

“An achingly real portrait of friendship in small town America — seen through the lens of Japan — that will ring true to many. It is nature, memory, heartbreak, and at its core, an ode to the beauty and wonder contained in everything, and the patience to find it. Through Mod’s guidance you take it all in — from freshwater mountain crabs scrambling on a log to a rural metal worker with a secret stash of meticulously crafted tiny iron frogs. Memoir, travelogue, photo book — this piece is a walk itself and one well worth taking.”

— Aziz Ansari, director, actor, stand-up dingaling, pizzaiolo supreme

“I felt like I was in Craig Mod’s head as he ambled around Japan. Along with giving me comfort, his calm and honest voice imparted wisdom. This book made me want to go for a long walk and learn to listen to my own inner voice.”

— Alec Soth, contemporary photographer, meditator

Things Become Other Things will be published by Random House on May 6, 2025.

Pre-order now and get a $30 coupon to use in the SP shop!

The absolute best place to buy TBOT's Random House edition is from your local bookshop. Go in, tell ’em you're looking for this book by this guy named Craig Mod. Regale them with your excitement about said book. Do you think this is going to be a great book? Say, "I think this is going to be a great book!" For the first time in my publishing life, a book I've written is available via the mega-distribution network of a major publisher. Let's lean on this superpower and support and amplify the critical community role of local businesses in publishing.

You can also, of course, buy the book all over the internet, including these places:

• Amazon
• Bookshop.org
• Apple Books
• Barnes & Noble

You can also add it to your shelf on Goodreads:
Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir.

If you use the Libby library app — which allows for borrowing of digital books using your local library card — please consider going in and tapping the “notify me” button to add TBOT to your queue. This sends a big signal to local libraries to stock the book. (You’ll probably have to search for “things become other things craig mod.”)

Even though the book doesn't come out until May 2025, pre-orders are extremely important. They help ensure the book has a strong launch and reaches the broadest possible audience.

Pre-orders also come with a bunch of perks I'll be announcing later in the fall. You'll be able to forward your receipt (or a picture of your receipt) to a special email address and unlock the perks. For now, subscribe to my Roden or Ridgeline newsletters to get updates on TBOT and more.

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About the book

A transformative 300-mile walk along Japan’s ancient pilgrimage routes and through depopulating villages inspires a heart-rending remembrance of a long-lost friend, documented alongside remarkable photographs.

Photographer and essayist Craig Mod is a veteran of long solo walks. But in 2021, during the pandemic shutdown of Japan’s borders, one particular walk around the Kumano Kodō routes—the ancient pilgrimage paths of Japan’s southern Kii Peninsula—took on an unexpectedly personal new significance. While passing the peninsula’s shrinking villages, Mod found himself reflecting on his own childhood in a post-industrial American town, his experiences as an adoptee, his unlikely relocation to Japan as a student at age nineteen, and his relationship with one lost friend, whose life was tragically cut short after their paths diverged. As the days passed, he considered why he has walked so rigorously and religiously during his twenty-five years as an immigrant in Japan, contemplating the power of walking itself. For Mod, solo walks are a tool to change the very structure of his mind, to better himself, and to bear witness to a quiet grace visible only when “you’re bored out of your skull and the miles left are long.”

Through the frame of a 300-mile-long pilgrimage walk, Things Become Other Things folds together history, literature, poetry, Shinto and Buddhist spirituality, and contemporary rural life in Japan via dozens of conversations with aging fishermen, multi-generational inn owners, farmers, and kissaten cafe “mamas.” Along the way, Mod communes with mountain fauna, marvels over evidence of bears and boars, and hopscotches around leeches. He encounters whispering priests and foul-mouthed little kids who ask him "just what the heck are you, anyway?" Through sharp prose and his curious archive of photographs, he records evidence of floods and tsunamis, the disappearance of life on the peninsula, and the capricious fecundity of nature.

Things Become Other Things blends memoir and travel writing at their best, transporting readers to an otherwise inaccessible Japan, one only made visible through Mod’s unique bicultural lens.

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Fine Art Edition

Wait? Didn't you already publish this book in November 2023? Yes! Yes we did! (Where we = me, Craig.) That was the fine art edition. Limited in quantity. Printed and bound in Japan, in full color on Heidelberg presses with a silk screened and foil stamped cover. Retailing for $100. This Random House edition is a significant expansion of that fine art edition — more than double the length in text with a dozen additional photographs. There is so much more context about me and my relationship to Japan, and more Japanese historical context as well. The Random House edition is printed and bound as a standard trade hardcover (and retails for $31 USD), with images in black and white. I'm tempted — almost! — to call them different books that emerged from the same source material.