The journey

Jiro Osaragi, whose "Homecoming" was much praised in 1955, is a novelist of unusual range and power. In "The Journey", a rich and eventful novel, told on a far more realistic plane than is customary in Japanese fiction, he dramatizes the themes of love and money, and the American impact on Japan at the end of the Occupation. --- The title refers not to any one journey, but to life, which traditionally, in Japan, is a journey without destination. Under American influence, the destination has become everything,; in Osaragi's view, the Japanese have become strivers even when, in prosperity, they need no longer strive.