Autumn Reflections and Other Writings

An old woman leaves the village that has long sheltered and despised her. A child selling flowers in Ginza reveals the painful distance between earning a living and learning how to face strangers. A young woman sewing among her mother’s pupils finds that even a cheerful evening cannot give her life a direction.

In these nine complete works, Miyamoto Yuriko moves between short fiction, city streets, remembered landscapes, and the questions of inward freedom. A tranquil moonlit walk turns into a crisis of love and instinct. A small garden opens onto longing for northern Japan, while impressions of Victoria, Arizona, and Mississippi offer sharply contrasting colors and moods.

Brief essays consider women’s individual hearts and the intimate possibilities of writing in Japanese. A final Tokyo sketch follows an aimless stranger into a cinema, where imitation and unease meet.