Left to savor are virtuoso touches, like a flock of birds that becomes useless paper, a train that glides along the surface of a lake, and one of the great villains of all time, Yubaba, who looks like a bobble-headed grandmother on speed.

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Ostler emails his brother in Latin for fun and enthusiasts maintain websites such as Circulus Latinus Interretialis (Internet Latin Circle), Grex Latine Loquentium (Flock of those Speaking Latin) and the connected online paper Ephemeris.

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These tiny, fugitive-looking images, in which luminous fragments of nature pines bowing before a wind, the undulation of a flock of cranes were painted in colored inks on handmade paper by his collaborator Tawaraya Sotatsu and then written over by Koetsu, have acquired, for Japanese taste, the sort of cardinal importance that a fresco cycle or an altarpiece might have for ours.

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