A May Morning and Other Writings

A young man cannot keep pace with his forthright American guest. A drinking companion exhausts two swaggering visitors with unfailing courtesy. An old cookbook recalls a father’s distant letters, while an iron kettle becomes the starting point for memories of a generous fellow writer.

In eight complete writings, Makino Shin’ichi combines comedy with a precise awareness of embarrassment, dependence, and the strange turns of thought. Literary praise and a fictional roundtable open into spirited arguments about modernity, artistic freedom, and the pressures of the literary world.

The collection closes with Brightly, Darkly, in which Junkichi’s examination failure, private disappointments, and uneasy attempts at roller skating lead him through alternating confidence and gloom. His own story is reproduced within the narrative, making the boundary between imagined life and experienced life part of the comedy and pain.