Dew on the Bush Clover and Other Pieces

A late-night gathering welcomes frightening visitors, until a woman’s presence and a broken grave tablet bring the proceedings into dangerous territory. In “Dew on the Bush Clover,” Izumi Kyōka lets recalled kindness, theatrical preparations and an unsettling encounter disturb the boundary between the living and the dead.

“A Journey to Iizaka” follows a traveler by rickshaw to a hot-spring town. Flowers, riverbanks, inn windows and a mistaken bridge name become occasions for humor, literary memory and unusually vivid descriptions of bathing and landscape.

“Cutting Hemp” ranges through the pleasures and perils of older travel: persistent rickshaw men, cheap steamship passages, food, torn socks, mountain roads, snow and severe summer heat. Its digressions preserve the writer’s affection for his mentor and his sharp defense of literary taste.