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Parent and ChildAuthor: Arishima Takeo
| Original Title | 親子 |
|---|---|
| Author | 有島 武郎 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | In the crisp autumn of Hokkaido’s mountains, a father and son arrive at a remote farm shrouded in fading light and decaying foliage. The aging patriarch, sharp-eyed and unyielding, obsesses over ledgers and contracts, determined to finalize a contentious land deal with a shrewd contractor. His son trails behind, haunted by the desolation around them—tenant farmers toiling in crumbling huts, children huddled silently by dim hearths, fields stripped bare by hardship. As negotiations unfold, tensions simmer: the father’s merciless pragmatism clashes with the son’s gnawing guilt over their complicity in exploitation. Beneath stoic silences and terse exchanges lies a chasm of generational discord—the elder’s lifetime of compromises colliding with the younger’s restless idealism. Night deepens, thick with unspoken resentments and the weight of inherited duty. Amidst frost-laden air and distant stars, both men grapple with truths that bind them as tightly as blood, yet threaten to unravel their fragile understanding of family, legacy, and what it means to live without lies. |
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