The Ocean of Words and Other Writings

What does life, war, and sport divided by zero have to do with Noh? An exuberant essay proposes a startling answer. A student society records its sudden growth, while a historian looks behind the reputation of women pilgrims and offers a sharply critical account of Kondō Isami.

This six-work anthology also follows a young narrator who mistakes an Indian neighbor’s grief for romance. Its final piece, Ōtsuki Fumihiko’s postscript to Genkai, recounts seventeen years of dictionary-making: the pursuit of elusive meanings, battles with printing and finance, family losses, and a determination to finish what had been begun.

First published between 1891 and 1930, these writings preserve their distinct forms and voices, from diagram and lecture list to story and personal testimony. Reader notes explain historical references, provisional readings, original quotations, and period assumptions. Together they offer encounters with performance, scholarship, public judgment, and private sorrow. AI-assisted translation, prepared and edited by Valentin Sarić.