In his new book Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir, published by Random House this month, photographer and essayist Craig Mod chronicles a transformative 300-mile journey through Japan's Kii Peninsula and along the ancient Kumano Kodō pilgrimage routes. His solo trek took place in 2021, when Japan's borders were closed due to the pandemic. Accordingly, the book offers readers entry to a seldom-seen Japan while interweaving meditations on loss, belonging, and identity.
In conversation while on book tour in the U.S., Mod summarizes it more succinctly: "This was a book showing a part of Japan you were never going to be able to access," he said. "Take a walk with me—that was the big message."
Having grown up in a struggling post-industrial, eastern American town, Mod draws parallels between his economically depressed hometown and the depopulating Japanese villages he encountered. "It was an avatar for a lot of places in America," Mod says of his birthplace, which remains unnamed in the book. "The point was that the socioeconomic parity between where I came from and these areas existed, yet the violence of where I came from was non-existent on this peninsula." During his journey, Mod visits kissas—small, family-run cafes and boarding houses—where owners share stories about how their business has dwindled as Japan's rural population declines.
Mod relocated to Japan at age 19. Part of what kept him there, he says, was a sense of security he hadn't experienced in the United States. "The first thing I felt was this sense of everyone around me being taken care of in a way that I'd never felt before," Mod says. "I was protected there in a way that was safe." The book also touches on Mod's experiences as an adoptee, and the complexities of identity that shaped his perspectives on life.
A veteran long-distance walker, Mod had made numerous treks through Japan, both alone and with friends (author and editor Kevin Kelly is a frequent walking companion), and has led walking tours where participants joined together for a week or more. For this book, however, solitude was essential. "I couldn't photograph if there was one other person with me. I couldn't write if there was one other person with me," he said. "I needed it to be solo."
In Things Become Other Things, Mod straddles genre boundaries, combining elements of memoir, travel writing, and art books. The photography isn’t merely illustrative, he says, but essential to conveying the landscapes that most visitors never saw. "The memoir component wasn't like 'I had a story to tell,' but it was necessary to give context to the experience," Mod explains, likening approach to the book to that of W.G. Sebald, though "dialed down a lot."
Having walked the routes during the height of the pandemic when few others were present, Mod took the opportunity to disconnect completely from digital distractions—no social media, news, or podcasts—and have a contemplative experience. His process involved walking for eight hours, covering 20-30 kilometers daily, then spending four to five hours each evening writing and editing photos.
This methodology stemmed from Mod's membership program, Special Projects, where subscribers to his newsletters, Roden and Ridgeline, are promised detailed, daily updates on his walks. Mod launched Special Projects six years ago "out of total desperation," he said. Though known in publishing circles as a consultant specializing in the relationship between digital and physical publishing—he was part of the early team that worked with software company Flipboard and was a regular speaker at the Yale publishing program—he nevertheless found himself "rejected by all these big publications" and "ghosted by editors."
The membership model proved successful enough to enable him to independently produce high-quality books like Kissa by Kissa, an earlier illustrated walking memoir. He self-published this book immediately sold out of a 1,000-copy print run priced at $100, and has gone through several subsequent printings. Kissa by Kissa was recently published in a Japanese translation and has already sold 5,000 copies.
When asked about the potential performative nature of walking journeys in today's social media-saturated world, Mod distinguishes his approach from more commercialized travel content. "I am so completely turned off by the transactional and ephemeral nature of all of that stuff," Mod says. "The slowness of the feedback loops of doing books felt healthier and more sustainable. It felt like you could run a marathon doing that as opposed to getting burnt out as a lot of YouTubers and TikTokers."
Looking ahead, Mod was already considering his next project, which might be a Tokyo-focused book coinciding with the 25th anniversary of living in the city.
Before that, he’d like to see Things Become Other Things translated into Japanese. In the meantime, he remains busy promoting his book, and has been visiting bookstores and appearing on podcasts, including the Kevin Rose Show, the Rich Roll podcast (forthcoming), and others, several of which have been, Mod says candidly, helpful. “I did the Tim Ferriss podcast and within three days I had several hundred more subscribers to my membership program,” he says, giving him some financial wiggle room to plan another walk or two—and leaving us looking forward to the sequel.
