Pathway to Japanese Literature
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| Original Title | マルクスの審判 |
|---|---|
| Author | 横光 利一 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | A railway crossing guard stands accused after a drunken, wealthy libertine is crushed by a freight train at the edge of a red-light district. The case seems simple, yet no witnesses exist—and the truth hinges entirely on psychology. Through an intense interrogation, the judge probes the guard’s poverty, loneliness, dead wives, suppressed desires, and long years of mechanical labor. Gradually, suspicion hardens into a belief: that class resentment or ideological hostility may have driven the man to murder. But as the questioning grows more manipulative, the judge begins to recognize something unsettling—his own fear of socialism, his own prejudices, and his own pleasure in coercion. The confession he extracts feels hollow, shaped more by rhetoric than fact. In the end, judgment turns inward, forcing the judge to confront whether justice has been served—or merely his own anxieties projected onto another man. |
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