Pathway to Japanese Literature

Discover Japan's stories—across time, across language.

SicknessAuthor: Miyazawa Kenji

Original Title	疾中
Author	宮沢賢治
Genre	Modern Short Fiction
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	In a hushed sickroom veiled in twilight, a fevered mind drifts between agony and transcendence. Blood stains silence blue as relentless winds whisper through bamboo grass outside—an indifferent world persisting beyond trembling hands and burning lungs. Visions flicker: spring rains baptize cedars, phantom bells toll from snowbound temples, shadowy Bodhisattvas hover at death’s threshold. The body unravels—a corroded vessel—while the spirit claws at fragments of Dharma teachings and half-remembered promises to bear others’ suffering. Memories of sunlit slopes and stonecutters’ laughter dissolve into delirium’s theater—black clouds seizing consciousness, salt lakes boiling in the chest. Yet through cracked lips come invocations to lotus sutras, to laws older than bone or breath. Time fractures—a geometric progression toward stillness—as the narrator teeters between surrender and defiance. What remains when flesh fails? A crystalline wind? The weight of unspoken farewells? Or perhaps only this: the raw, luminous act of witnessing one’s own dissolution beneath an April moon.