Kusamakura by Natsume Soseki trans. Meredith McKinneyPenguin Books, 2008

Beautiful images: a “vast inkwash world of cloud and rain shot through diagonally with a thousand silver arrows,” the blue of a celadon plate, the yellow of mustard-blossoms. A journey in vignettes and inaction: a painter walks through the mountains, stays at an inn with a hot spring, flirts with the daughter of the innkeeper, doesn’t paint a single picture. Slow springtime and mountain air, ease and grace and humor, too.