Kiku: The Japanese Art of Good Listening

Inspired by the Japanese concept of kiku--a more engaged, empathetic style of listening--a sociolinguistics researcher and writer offers a ground-breaking guide to more intentional and meaningful communication.

No other life form turns noise into sound, sound into language, then language into understanding quite the way we humans do when we listen. As a sociolinguist who grew up in different places with very different languages, Haru Yamada has always been fascinated with the way people navigate their day listening to language systems that code the world in such dramatically different ways. And it was as Haru was recovering in the ICU from an accident that had inflicted a permanent hearing disability when she rediscovered the extraordinary benefit found in the science of listening--the critical intelligence we need to learn and grow and get better.

Now, Haru Yamada offers a practical guide to more effective listening as a perceptive, creative exercise. We don't just listen to what people say and don't say, we reconstruct what someone else is saying and doing and meaning and feeling. Listening is a skill that requires our physical ear and brain power and the effort of our creative mind and social heart to remix what we hear from others and recreate it within ourselves. Kiku will allow you to harness the vital energy of listening to connect, sustain, and enhance the relationships you have with your friends, families, and professional teams.

Author: Haru Yamada
Publisher: Balance
Published: 10/07/2025
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.16lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.27w x 1.07d
ISBN: 9780306837647


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 10/01/2025 pg. 55

About the Author
Haru Yamada is a sociolinguistics researcher and writer with a PhD from Georgetown University. A distinction of her doctoral dissertation on conversational analysis of bankers' meetings led to the publication of American and Japanese Business Discourse, where she introduced the idea of speaker- and listener-led conversations. Developing her concept of listener-led conversations in a publication with Oxford University Press, she published Different Games, Different Rules with a foreword by New York Times best-selling author Deborah Tannen. She regularly speaks at academic conferences.

Haru's life mission is to champion listening, in many ways enforced by a serious accident which left her nearly deaf and with a lifelong hearing disability. While hearing loss isn't ideal in someone who spends their time listening, this personal challenge bolsters much of her everyday life and informs the book, making listening a thoughtful part of daily practice, drawing from skills she acquired from over seven international moves before attending university, and further moves as a working adult. She currently lives in London with her French partner, two multilingual, biracial, multicultural children in a hybrid working, bigenerational home.