Cherry Blossoms in the New Musashino and Other Essays

A gourd of sake, a companion, and a road leading toward blossoms: Ōmachi Keigetsu needs little encouragement to leave home. In these fifteen essays, he explores the changing countryside around Tokyo, climbs Mount Tsukuba, watches moonlight on the Sumida and Tokyo Bay, and finally reaches an island he has long wished to visit.

His journeys are full of fragrant plum groves, immense avenues of cherries, teahouses, boats, and unexpected conversations. They also bring practical embarrassments: a dwindling purse, an unruly stomach, a dangerous fall, bad sake, and writing obligations displaced by convivial guests. Poems interrupt the road, and remembered friends give familiar scenery a sharper sadness.

A travel writer and poet of the Meiji and Taishō eras, Keigetsu combines lyrical attention with comic self-observation. This complete translation includes the supplied poems and publication lines, with notes on literary allusions, period terms, uncertain names, and textual problems. It preserves both his delight in the natural world and the historically situated judgments that accompany it. AI-assisted translation.