Sketches of the Chikuma River

A river valley becomes a whole world in these intimate sketches of rural Japan. In Komoro and the surrounding mountains, Shimazaki Tōson watches pupils at work and play, farmers bringing in their harvests, travelers gathering around an inn’s fire, and village festivals spilling through the streets. He follows the Chikuma by train and riverboat, crosses woods after dark, and waits through a winter whose cold reaches into every corner of the house.

The pleasures of close observation sit beside poverty, illness, uneasy social encounters, and the unsettling routines of a slaughterhouse. Tōson gives room to conversations, local customs, work, weather, and the changing colors of fields and mountains. Spring arrives gradually, in rain, roadside weeds, and the smallest flowers.

A major figure in modern Japanese literature, Tōson writes here with the curiosity of a teacher still learning from the people around him. This complete English translation includes the preface, all twelve parts, and his closing reflection on the sketches and the development of modern Japanese prose.