The Day the Water Stopped and Other Essays

When an earthquake cuts off Tokyo’s water, Terada Torahiko begins with a practical inconvenience and ends by questioning the quality of the objects and knowledge on which modern life depends. A broken switch and a faulty electric bell become evidence in a larger investigation.

These six complete essays range widely without losing sight of particular things. A suffering cart horse, a sketch beside a railway, a storm-broken cherry tree, and the fingers of a cellist lead toward reflections on sympathy, invention, and understanding. A longer essay asks how scientific laws can describe a universe in which everything influences everything else.

In The Motion-Picture Age, childhood shadow puppets and magic lanterns lead to a searching discussion of cinema, sound, linked verse, and picture scrolls. Six Spring Pieces finds mystery in seasonal change, time-lapse photography, and the unsettled boundary between matter and life.