Shion Miura (三浦しをん) (1976–) , daughter of a well-known Japanese classics scholar, acquired her love of reading at a very young age. When, as a senior in the Faculty of Letters at Waseda University, she began her job hunt looking for an editorial position, a literary agent recognized her writing talent and hired her to begin writing an online book review column even before she graduated. Miura made her fiction debut a year after finishing college, in 2000, when she published the novel Kakuto suru mono ni maru (A Passing Grade for Those Who Fight), based in part on her own experiences during the job hunt. When she won the Naoki Prize in 2006 for her linked-story collection Mahoro ekimae Tada Benriken (The Handymen in Mahoro Town), she had not yet reached her 30th birthday—an unusually young age for this prize; in fact it was her second nomination. Her novels since then include the 2006 Kaze ga tsuyoku fuiteiru (The Wind Blows Hard), about the annual Ekiden long-distance relay race in which universities compete, and the 2010 Kogure-so monogatari (The Kogure Apartments), depicting the lives of people dwelling in an old rundown wooden-frame apartment house. In 2012 she received the Booksellers Award for the novel Fune o amu (The Great Passage), a tale about compiling a dictionary. A manga aficionado, Miura has declared herself a particular fan of the "boys' love" subgenre about young homosexual encounters.
This book is amazing, particularly at the beginning, when it reads like Miura is expressing the art of Japanese calligraphy through words. Even later, when it falls into her traditional world of male friendship (or male love without physical contact), it is a beauty.
The story is pretty simple: you have a man that works at a hotel, and another man who earns his bread as a calligraphy teacher or hand writing wedding invitations, etc. The first one visits the second because a family wants to hold a ceremony at the hotel and want the teacher to write the invitations. What follows is a beautiful story of friendship, fear of social conventions, the desire to create and break free... through Miura's beautiful writing style and sense of humor.
It is not a masterpiece, but it is pretty close.
The best: that marvelous beginning
The worst: that it is 'just' another Miura's story about male friendship
Alternatives: there are many Miura's books that are kind of a mirror to this; check them out, as she is pretty good, Kawakami's "夏物語" ("Breasts and Eggs") is about a different kind of relationship, but also pretty good