献灯使

Beautifully Written But Difficult

An interesting, beautifully written read (I only read the titular short story, not the entire collection). It mixes themes of humor, grief, and sadness, depending on the character's perspective and uses a nonlinear narrative which is full of anecdotes and musings, mainly from Yoshiro's POV. I had a lot of fun reading it. I liked the hopefulness of the ending from Mumei's POV, where he had fun with his old neighbor before becoming an emissary. I also loved how nuanced Yoshiro's character was.

The language used is quite advanced, with lots of wordplay, discussion of a variety of topics which each require their own vocab lookups, and plenty of nuance. Not something I'd recommend reading unless you have a lot of experience already and can appreciate it properly.