Pathway to Japanese Literature

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

The MinerAuthor: Natsume Soseki

Original Title	坑夫
Author	夏目漱石
Genre	Modern Short Fiction
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	A young man flees Tokyo in despair, driven by unnamed turmoil and a desire to vanish from society. Exhausted and penniless, he trudges through an endless pine grove, each step weighed by existential dread. At a desolate tea stall, he encounters a brash recruiter whose unsettling gaze dissects him like a commodity. Lured by promises of profit and purpose, he agrees to labor in a remote copper mine—a decision born less of hope than resignation. As they journey deeper into shadowed mountains, the recruit’s hollow assurances clash with the protagonist’s fractured psyche, where memories of guilt and alienation blur with the bleak reality ahead. The road narrows, choices dissolve, and the boundary between escape and entrapment fades. Haunted by spectral visions of his past and the recruiter’s enigmatic motives, he confronts a chilling truth: survival may demand surrendering not just his body, but his very sense of self.