Pathway to Japanese Literature

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

BattlefieldAuthor: Yumeno Kyūsaku

Original Title	戦場
Author	夢野久作
Genre	Popular Fiction
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	In the frozen hellscape of World War I’s Verdun front, Dr. Orkus Cladel—a diminutive, enigmatic surgeon with a profound aversion to war—finds himself thrust into a nightmare of duty and despair. Assigned to a German medical camp littered with mangled bodies and echoing with artillery thunder, he confronts the grotesque machinery of battle: soldiers maimed by friendly fire, officers enforcing ruthless pragmatism, and a system that grinds humanity into cannon fodder. Amidst this chaos, Cladel forms a fraught bond with Pōeru Hainrihhi, a young aristocrat-turned-soldier blinded by war’s cruelty, who entrusts him with a desperate secret tied to family betrayal. As Colonel Waruderuzei, a merciless medical commander, unveils the army’s chilling logic—prioritizing battlefield efficiency over compassion—Cladel’s ideals unravel. Vivid hallucinations of corpse-strewn landscapes and moral decay blur with reality, exposing war’s existential absurdity. This haunting fragment—presented as a rediscovered manuscript—immerses readers in visceral horror and psychological torment, probing the fragile line between duty and monstrosity without revealing where salvation or damnation lies.