Travels with a Writing Brush edited by Meredith McKinney review – the joy of Japanese travel writing www.theguardian.com

Spanning more than 1,000 years, this is a remarkable work filled with wonderful vignettes of Japanese life and sensibilityIn this delightful anthology, McKinney traces the evolution of travel writing in Japan through diaries, stories, drama and poetry.
She reveals how a distinctive poetics of travel emerged across more than a thousand years of literary history, very different from that of the west.
In this remarkable work of translation and scholarship, filled with wonderful vignettes of Japanese life and sensibility, McKinney introduces readers to the nation’s rich and unique literary tradition.
• Travels with a Writing Brush, translated by Meredith McKinney, is published by Penguin (£10.99).
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