The Wayfarer

A young Tokyo man, Jirō, comes to Osaka to meet a friend and is soon drawn into other people's affairs: a hospital room, a marriage being quietly arranged, and a household whose cheerful surface he has trusted all his life. Then his mother, his elder brother Ichirō and his sister-in-law Nao arrive from Tokyo, and the holiday turns toward Wakayama and the sea.

Ichirō is a scholar, gifted, impatient and alone, who cannot rest in anyone's good faith, not even his wife's, and he asks his younger brother for a service that nobody in the family can speak of afterward. Jirō narrates, cool and self-observing, noticing everything and understanding late.

The novel moves from the busy streets of Osaka to a storm-struck seaside inn, back to the house in Tokyo where little is said and everything is felt, and at last to a long letter from a friend of Ichirō's who has taken him away on a journey of his own, to report what he finds.