The Sunflower and Other Stories, Plays, and Poems

A street worker tends an unexpected sunflower with such affection that it changes his daily rounds. Two children protect a rabbit from a hunter, a tiny locomotive attempts a task its larger companions refuse, and a country visitor finds that the capital watches him wherever he goes. In these stories, tenderness and comedy sit beside jealousy, shame, disappointment, and loss.

This collection also includes a springtime play and two sequences from The Island of Cherry Blossoms: poems shaped by folk songs and theater, and prose memories of roads, puppets, family secrets, and an elusive girl at a window. A child at the cinema dreams himself into Jackie Coogan’s adventures; two schoolboys discover the uneasy cost of a stolen holiday.

Takehisa Yumeji (1884–1934), celebrated as an artist as well as a writer, gives ordinary gestures a vivid visual presence. This new English translation preserves the supplied works in full, with songs, stage directions, and concise notes on selected cultural references. AI-assisted translation.