Pathway to Japanese Literature
Discover Japan's stories—across time, across language.
← Back
Daidoji Shinsuke: A LifeAuthor: Akutagawa Ryūnosuke
| Original Title | 大導寺信輔の半生 |
|---|---|
| Author | 芥川 竜之介 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | In the gritty streets of Honjo, where mud-clogged lanes meet the stench of algae-choked canals, Daidoji Shinsuke navigates a world shaped by poverty and quiet defiance. Born into a lower-middle-class family clinging to respectability, he grows amidst cellar workshops and secondhand shops, finding fragile beauty in rooftop weeds and rain-puddled skies. Shame shadows him—raised on cow’s milk instead of a mother’s breast, mocked for his frail frame, and tormented by a father whose frugality masks desperation. Yet books become his refuge: *Water Margin*’s bandits ignite his imagination; European novels dissect human frailty; haikai poetry sharpens his eye for nature’s overlooked grace. \nSchool is a battleground of humiliation and rebellion, where teachers punish his insolence and peers sneer at his bookishness. Friendships flicker between intellectual sparring and class-driven alienation, while poverty etches self-loathing into his soul—a hatred of lies told to survive, of luxury he cannot touch. Through it all, Honjo’s desolation lingers in his dreams: a drowned corpse adrift at dawn, the sting of envy, and the weight of a head too large for his slender neck. Shinsuke’s journey—a tapestry of yearning and defiance—unfolds in the shadows of a world that both suffocates and shapes him. |
← Return to List← Return to TOP