Yusuke Norishiro / Okayama Tabifude-kai "Compiling Landscapes 2025: Sketch Essay Workshop Collection"

“How this book will be read is as unpredictable as how a landscape will be viewed; I have no idea right now. But I imagine that as I continue this act of carving tree rings within the same landscape, it will gradually become clearer. It might be something important, something obvious, or something disappointing, but for now, anything is fine. I really love continuing to do something with such a faint hope that it will be forgotten as I move my pencil.” — Yusuke Norishiro

This is the second collection of landscape sketches, born from a workshop titled "Writing Landscapes with Shaseibun" led by novelist Yusuke Norishiro in Okayama City. Norishiro, who has accumulated approximately 300 written landscape sketches over seven years ("sitting quietly for twenty or thirty minutes, gazing at the landscape in front of me and writing"), curated this collection. The first half features texts selected by the instructor as noteworthy from the landscape sketches written during the three workshops, along with the instructor's comments. The second half includes landscape sketches written by each participant in various locations outside the workshops. This third workshop saw the participation of established writers such as novelist Shizuka Hori, poet Yuko Takenaka, and essayist Kani no Oyako, whose texts are also included. From the changes that emerge by simply gazing at and writing about a landscape, to new encounters with landscapes through writing and reading.