Furusato

Seventy short chapters of a mountain childhood, told by a father to his children: the kite that answers back, the packhorse with its bell, the old manservant's fireside tales, the pear tree that says "not yet."

Shimazaki Tōson, author of Broken Commandment and The Family, wrote Furusato for his own children in 1920, looking back on Magome in the Kiso valley, where he was born in 1872 and lived until he left for Tokyo at nine. Memoir and fable move together: a hackberry jay teaches a boy to know the exact right time, a fox keeper of a shrine confesses his youth, a rock tells a boy that people look far away and miss the jewels at their feet.

This complete, unabridged new translation keeps the book's plain, spoken voice and includes a translator's note, short endnotes and source information. It ends with the appended fable "The Brothers."