The Traveling Tree
by Michio Hoshino
translated by Eli K.P. William
First published in 1994, The Traveling Tree by world renowned photographer Michio Hoshino is a literary classic. In this enduringly popular collection, naturalist, mystic and adventurer Michio Hoshino reflects on the world around him.
Michio Hoshino’s life was changed after coming across a book containing an aerial photograph of the tiny Inupuiak village, Shishmaref, in a used bookstore in Tokyo. The teenager was immediately enchanted by this tiny cluster of dwellings on the Arctic Sea. What sort of people lived in such a desolate place, seemingly at the ends of the Earth? The photograph intrigued him so much that he decided to write a letter asking if he could visit the village. Not knowing to whom he should address the letter, he made it out to simply, “Mayor, Shishmaref.” To his surprise, he received a response from an Inupiak family willing to host him and spent the next summer, at the age of 19, immersed in their way of life.
After this introduction to Alaska, Hoshino was smitten with America’s northernmost state and dedicated the remainder of his life to photographing and writing about it. The Traveling Tree is a collection of his writing published at the peak of his artistic prowess, only two years before his career was tragically cut short at the age of 43 by a fatal bear attack while on a shoot in the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The Traveling Tree has gained increasing popularity in the more than 20 years since Hoshino’s untimely death. His work has been featured in numerous Japanese television specials and documentaries and an exhibition of his photography has travelled to cities and communities across Japan.
Praise For The Traveling Tree
“Hoshino’s prose sits somewhere between Henry David Thoreau’s matter-of-fact observations in Walden and Annie Dillard’s poetical musings in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek… Translator Eli KP William is equal to Hoshino’s lyricism.”
—Asian Review of Books
“Penetrating writings on nature, time, memory and his journeys into the self… now elegantly translated into English for the first time by the novelist Eli K P William.”
—Literary Review
“The Traveling Tree proves how boundless curiosity — whether for roaming wolves, Arctic glaciers or bush pilots — can breathe better, more honest, open-ended attention into the world we inhabit, precisely because we all know, deep down, that one day it will eat us alive.”
—Japan Times
Praise For The Traveling Tree
“Hoshino’s prose sits somewhere between Henry David Thoreau’s matter-of-fact observations in Walden and Annie Dillard’s poetical musings in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek… Translator Eli KP William is equal to Hoshino’s lyricism.”
—Asian Review of Books
“Penetrating writings on nature, time, memory and his journeys into the self… now elegantly translated into English for the first time by the novelist Eli K P William.”
—Literary Review
“The Traveling Tree proves how boundless curiosity — whether for roaming wolves, Arctic glaciers or bush pilots — can breathe better, more honest, open-ended attention into the world we inhabit, precisely because we all know, deep down, that one day it will eat us alive.”
—Japan Times
Other Books by Eli K.P. William
About The Translator
Eli K.P. William is the author of The Jubilee Cycle trilogy (Skyhorse Publishing), a science fiction trilogy set in a dystopian future Tokyo. He also translates Japanese literature, including the bestselling novel A Man (Crossing) by Keiichiro Hirano, and serves as a writing consultant for a well-known Japanese video game company. His translations, essays, and short stories have appeared in such publications as Granta, The Southern Review, and Monkey.
Learn more about Eli.
Follow him on BlueSky: @elikpwilliam