Au temps de Botchan #3

The quiet poetry of everyday life in early twentieth-century Japan fills this third volume of Au temps de Botchan, published by Seuil in 2004. The cover presents two figures rendered in Jiro Taniguchi's characteristically graceful line work: a young boy crouching to examine something in a puddle, dressed in a light blue yukata, while a woman in a vivid pink-and-green checked kimono stands nearby holding a bucket. It's an unhurried, intimate moment — the kind of carefully observed human detail that makes this collaboration between Natsuo Sekikawa and Jiro Taniguchi so genuinely rewarding.