Departure and Other Writings

A young traveler enters Yoshino’s flowering mountains and finds that admiration for poetic elegance can turn into bewilderment, grief, and dream. Four friends cross Izu together, comparing hot springs, enduring cold carriage rides, and finding pleasure in the changing country. In a Tokyo household, a young woman’s marriage unsettles the bonds between sisters, motherless children, and their widowed uncle.

These three complete writings show Shimazaki Tōson observing both landscape and the movements of the heart. A Tale of a Mountain Home entwines literary memory with uncanny experience. A Journey in Izu carries the voices of companions through the practical details of travel. Departure follows new beginnings through clothes, meals, letters, and the quiet persistence of old attachments.

A major novelist and poet of modern Japan, Tōson gives ordinary objects and conversations emotional depth. This new English translation preserves each work in full, with concise notes on names, cultural references, and difficult allusions.