Heads and Bellies and Other Writings

A crowded express train waits while its passengers sing, quarrel, and demand their fares back. Along the Sumida, a poet watches birds and shares small journeys with friends. Elsewhere, a bereaved young woman accompanies her family to a crematorium, and a boy remembers a childhood friend who has not returned after an accident.

Fifteen complete works by twelve Japanese writers range across fiction, poetry, criticism, travel, and social reporting. Kinoshita Naoe follows farmers confronting mine pollution, then finds another register in snowbound Nikkō. Ishibashi Ningetsu debates Mori Ōgai’s The Dancing Girl; Taki Rentarō introduces a musical collection, and Asai Retsu celebrates Shinano in song.

Yokomitsu Riichi’s restless prose stands beside mountain memories and a meditation on love, art, and the soil. A final tale turns a supposed prisoner’s confession into a wry encounter between two writers.