Companions of the Holiday

Originally published by Weatherhill in 1968. Second edition 1977 by Charles Tuttle Inc. The title is taken from an anonymous senryu: Laughing together, They set out. But they return Silent, separate. Timothy Harris, in his introduction to this new and revised edition, writes that Companions is: ... a comedy that is set in Japan, has mainly Japanese characters, is written by an American, and yet draws on a modernist tradition that is peculiarly English, since the chief influences are the novels of Ronald Firbank, Ivy Compton-Burnett and Henry Green.