"The Square Light of the Moon is the journal of a journey from one shore to another ... a marvelous initiation into Japanese culture."

Translated from French by Christiane Guillois
ISBN 978-1-935830-71-9 (print)
ISBN 978-1-935830-72-6 (ebook)
Publication Date: February 14, 2021

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Véronique Le Normand loves nature, poetry, and travel.

She was born in 1955 into a family of 3 children and grew up in Brittany. Her grandmother, a healer, opened her eyes to nature’s secrets, her godfather, a Catholic priest and philosophy professor, introduced her to spirituality, and the poet George Perros refined her taste in literature. After studies in the humanities at the University of Western Brittany (UBO) and at Kiel University in Germany, she moved to Paris where, in 1982, she began working as a journalist at Marie-Claire and met her husband, the writer Daniel Pennac. She published her first children’s books, the Basile series, in 1992. Many others were to follow, among them four books on adolescence (La vie de Lily), a collection of short stories in which the protagonist is often a house (Si on rentrait), and a book about jam (La Saison des confitures). A 1999 encounter with Venetian engraver-publishers produced a work of her poetry and engravings, Un aveugle à Venise.

In 2002, the sudden death of her younger brother, Thierry, plunged her into deep depression. She sought the help of a homeopathic doctor who treated her by placing his hands on her body. Thus was she introduced to Jin Shin Jyutsu, a Japanese art form of harmonizing energies that teaches us that we can help ourselves. She passionately embraced this oriental physio-philosophy, which in France was taught by Natalie Max, and attended seminars led by Wayne Hackett, Susan Schwartz, Anita Willoughby, Matthias Roth, Muriel Carlton, Chus Arias, Jill Pasquinelli, and Michael Wenniger, all of whom trained with Mary Burmeister, who brought the "gift" of Jin Shin Jyutsu to the West.

In 2006, the publication in Japanese of one of Véronique's children’s books, J’aime, earned her an invitation to Tokyo. She fell in love with Japanese culture: its cinema, its literature, its cuisine, and its art de vivre. In 2017, she resolved to learn more about the man who had revived the ancient art of Jin Shin Jyutsu: Master Jiro Murai. Accompanied by her friend and interpreter, Kyoko Watanabe, a professor at Meiji Tokyo University, she met with Sadaki Kato, the son of Haruki Kato, Jiro Murai’s designated heir, traveled through the magnificent natural settings of the Japanese archipelago, and came to appreciate the acute sensibility of the Japanese that is so clearly visible in the way they take care of their bodies and in the way that care resonates in their minds and souls. In what was to become a long journey of initiation she retraced the steps of the elusive master of Jin Shin Jyutsu, often, it seemed, in the presence of the 17th century poet-monk-traveler, Basho.

On her return to France, she began writing a book about her experience that Actes Sud published in 2019. For its title, she borrowed a line from one of Basho's haiku: "La Lumière carrée de la lune" (The Square Light of the Moon). That same year, at a workshop led by Inger Van Dobben, she met Christiane Guillois, who brought the book to the attention of Michael Eskin and Kathrin Stengel of Upper West Side Publishers, Inc.

Véronique Le Normand loves to communicate her experience of “the art of longevity and benevolence” that is Jin Shin Jyutsu, and to share with others this gift from the universe that constantly reminds her that life is a journey.