Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Kusamakura & Bunchō

Kusamakura & Bunchō

Sōseki, Natsume
Sasaki, Umeji
Hirafuku, Hyakusui

Paperback

Fiction Anthologies

ISBN10: 1609623509
ISBN13: 9781609623500
Publisher: Zea Books
Published: Jul 9 2025
Pages: 258
Weight: 0.57
Height: 0.58 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
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.

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