Winter Approaches and Other Writings

A rare visit from an old friend leads a young wife into reflections on motherhood, artistic ambition, and the coming winter of life. An evening beside the sea reveals the uneasiness beneath a lovers’ brief happiness. A married couple’s joyful walk into Tokyo turns into a painful lesson in comparison and resentment.

Elsewhere, a lawyer recounts a disputed theft and a brutal investigation, a widowed nurse confronts a memory she cannot dismiss, and a woman discovers the unlikely source of her ideal of masculine dignity. A white hen becomes the center of a child’s affection and a lasting memory of loss.

Mizuno Senko’s writings attend to the movements of thought within ordinary lives: pride, tenderness, jealousy, regret, and the wish to work and live more fully. Her imagery shifts from crowded streets to snowbound mountains, from a bedside’s winter sunlight to the quiet bustle of a family courtyard.