Ochō’s Visit and Other Writings

A young editor promises his readers the world, takes up the piano, boasts of his photography, and discovers how difficult it is to speak in public. Elsewhere, a would-be poet admits that he is thinking only of cigarettes, a little girl tries to wake her father, and a writer becomes furious when a magazine cuts his story off at “One, two, three!”

In these eleven writings, Makino Shin’ichi turns literary ambition, friendship, idleness, and embarrassment into intimate comedy. Thirty-six editorial afterwords preserve his conversations with the young readers of Girl and Boy. Brief memorials interrupt the laughter with the shock of loss, while an interview exposes the uncertain memories behind a writer’s first publications.

The closing story, “Ochō’s Visit,” follows an anxious journey to a household where grand plans for America collide with drinking, sleep, and dwindling money. This complete translation includes the source’s numbered sections, pseudonyms, dates, and quoted passages, with concise notes on magazine culture, unfamiliar expressions, and ambiguous names. It offers a varied encounter with a Japanese writer whose cheerful self-display repeatedly opens onto self-doubt.