Toward the end of her life Fumiko Hayashi (1903-1951) said that she did not think her work would outlive her. Happily, she was quite wrong: She remains one of Japan's most read authors, it seems that her works will live as long as Japanese literature does, and here is a new and needed translation of what many think her finest work.
"Floating Clouds (Ukigumo)" (1951), Hayashi's last novel, is also her most venturesome in that she moves from the autobiographical fiction of her first work, "A Vagabond's Story (Horoki)" (1930), to a more structured account of her life and her times, keeping to what she knows best but locating it in a larger social context.
Yukiko returns to a defeated Japan. She had been in French Indo-China during the war itself and now comes back to a homeland completely changed. Her only hope is Tomioka, a man she loved, now repatriated like herself.