Kusamakura & Bunchō

Kusamakura-literally "grass pillow"-is a Japanese expression for being "on the road," away from home, relying on the hospitality of others. Natsume Sōseki's novel concerns a painter-artist on holiday at a hot springs hotel where he is the lone guest. His encounters with the locals-including a tea-shop matron, a drunken barber, a wood-gatherer, an abbot of a Zen monastery, the hotel proprietor, and, most intriguingly, his lovely enigmatic divorced daughter-prompt reflections and musings on the nature of art and its relation to real life. How can one experience life and still represent it in literature or art? Doesn't art require separation from the immediate world, and does it really reflect that world at all or rather some emotional state of the artist who has seen it? Against the background of the ongoing Russo-Japanese War, the novel presents an idyllic interlude where the search for artistic relevance is upended by the unpredictability of human emotions. Bunchō is a short sketch about a tiny pet bird that brings cheerfulness, pride, and memories of a beautiful woman into the dull life of a writer who ultimately fails to address his own responsibilities.