The writer of a zuihitsu follows the ink the way Matisse followed  the hand. The Japanese form, presaged by poetic prose in Chinese,  is a kind of lyric essay, an assemblage of fragments—description,  narration, meditation, social commentary, manifesto, journal entry,  travelogue, reportage and memoir.  
 
Helga Jermy's zuihitsu, Following the Ink, is a  poet’s day book of a journey through Japan, a touching and quietly  profound consideration of belonging, otherness, modernity,  youth and aging, the passage of time, the kitsch and the classic, and,  always, love.