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Kitchen DiaryAuthor: Yokomitsu Riichi
| Original Title | 厨房日記 |
|---|---|
| Author | 横光 利一 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | A weary traveler returns to Japan after years abroad, his mind brimming with fragmented tales from a Europe teetering between chaos and absurdity. At a coastal retreat, he recounts to his wife a baffling incident: surrealists in wartime Switzerland who staged an empty ceremony, leaving society’s elite seething in confusion. His travels reveal darker threads—a Swedish tycoon’s economic manipulations collapsing nations, Parisian artists debating strikes while a dog’s bark drowns their ideals, and a haunting encounter with a daughter of ruinous wealth married to a poet-revolutionary. Yet home offers no respite. Tokyo’s streets feel alien, tax reforms upend old hierarchies, and a lost child’s disappearance fractures the illusion of stability. Between Europe’s intellectual decay and Japan’s shifting identity—where earthquakes shape culture more than ideology—the man grapples with belonging. His journey becomes a mirror: of societies unraveling, families straining under unspoken tensions, and the quiet violence of a world where reason and tradition collide. What truths lie buried in the space between continents—or within the silence of a child’s return? |
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