Tea Talk - 1919

A painter discovers that a flattering promotion comes with a request for a free picture. A celebrated pianist meets a novelist whose life was saved by a piano, though not by its music. Weather forecasters pray for rain to rescue their reputations.

Susukida Kyūkin’s 1919 newspaper columns expose the small vanities of artists, politicians, scholars, businessmen, and lovers. Stories from Japan mingle with anecdotes about European monarchs, American writers, and international musicians. A boastful mayor, an excessively hospitable innkeeper, and a conductor who trusts a gold watch’s case more than its mechanism all come under the author’s mischievous scrutiny.

Humor gives way to affection in paired accounts of the historian Uchida Ginzō’s illness and death. This new English translation presents the complete supplied work, from January 5 through August 31, preserving dated headings, dialogue, poems, and inscriptions. Concise notes clarify Japanese customs, wordplay, names, and historical uncertainties while retaining the narrator’s distinctive voice.