Pathway to Japanese Literature
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Countryside Clock and Twelve Other PiecesAuthor: Hagiwara Sakutaro
See Author Details Here：Wiki (Hagiwara Sakutaro)
| Original Title | 田舎の時計他十二篇 |
|---|---|
| Author | 萩原 朔太郎 |
| Genre | War & Social Literature |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | Hagiwara Sakutarō’s vignettes paint haunting landscapes of human longing and existential weariness. In coastal vistas, the sea mirrors life’s monotony—endless waves eroding hope, leaving hollow dissatisfaction in sunlit dunes. Rural hamlets cling to ancestral time, where clocks stand still and generations sleep beneath winter-withered mounds, bound by bloodlines resisting change. A solitary climb up a misted slope reveals an ethereal plain where dreamlike figures blur reality, while soot-choked Ōi Town throbs with factory laborers’ despair, their lives echoing in grimy tenements and clattering wagons. Post offices hum with unspoken sorrows, telegrams and savings books cradling fractured dreams. Urban crowds offer paradoxical solace: strangers sharing benches yet orbiting separate silences. From a philosopher’s obsession with “reinforced concrete” to a lion’s interrupted nap beneath a weathered “For Rent” sign, each fragment dissects desire’s futility. These meditations—on graves, suicide’s irreversible regret, and dreams dissolving into absurdity—weave a tapestry of melancholy, where existence flickers between fleeting illusions and the weight of eternity. |
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