The beloved fantasy manga returns in a hardcover omnibus edition featuring a completely original translation and new cover designs.

Before life as we know it, there existed entities that don't obey the laws of our reality—primordial beings known as mushi. In Japan, a man named Ginko wanders the land, investigating incursions by mushi into the human world—and by us into theirs. He is a mushi master…a mushishi.

Includes Japanese volumes 3-4 in a premium casewrap hardcover featuring a new to English cover illustration.

There are some you can see, and some you cannot. Mushi are a different form of life--one that Ginko, a mushishi, travels across the land seeking to decipher. Some mushi can affect a person's limbs, causing a rust-like stiffness that leaves them all but bedridden. Others can envelop people in an eerie sea mist that disrupts their sense of time. Even as he observes mushi and deduces how to live with them, Ginko keeps his feet firmly planted in the real world. But when a boy finds a "false spring" in the barren winter landscape, Ginko himself comes dangerously close to crossing over to the other side.

Upon its release in the 2000s, Mushishi earned global acclaim for its poetic episodic storytelling and delicate, beautiful artwork, winning the Japan Media Arts Prize, selection as a Best Manga by the Japan Agency for Cultural Affairs, and recommendation as a top read for teens by the American Library Association. The series inspired two TV anime adaptations in 2005 and 2014 and a live-action film directed by the legendary Katsuhiro Otomo, creator of AKIRA. Unfortunately, after being out of print for 15 years, English copies of Mushishi became as elusive as the strange creatures that populate its pages—until now.

Kodansha's new edition of Mushishi features an all-new translation and lettering and color pages and cover illustrations never seen in the U. S. before.