Pathway to Japanese Literature
Discover Japan's stories—across time, across language.
← Back
HungerAuthor: Hara Tamiki
| Original Title | 飢ゑ |
|---|---|
| Author | 原 民喜 |
| Genre | War & Social Literature |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | In a fragile glass-walled house teetering on the edge of collapse, a nameless narrator navigates a suffocating existence marked by relentless hunger and paranoia. Once welcomed as a guest, he now lives as a spectral prisoner, scrutinized by the household’s volatile wife, whose seething contempt transforms mundane routines into psychological warfare. Thin walls amplify every creak and whisper, while memories of Hiroshima’s devastation—charred crowds, phantom moans—bleed into his fractured reality. The absent master’s cryptic poetry offers fleeting kinship, yet even this connection frays under the wife’s tyranny. Prohibited from basic comforts, starved of dignity, the narrator’s world narrows to a claustrophobic cube of white walls and frosted glass. Outside, hydrangeas bloom mockingly; inside, smoke and humidity cling like ghosts. As tensions escalate toward a shattering climax, the line between survival and surrender blurs—each day a battle against encroaching madness in a house that mirrors his unraveling psyche. What truths lurk beneath the wife’s wrath? And how long before the fragile structure—of both home and mind—collapses entirely? |
← Return to List← Return to TOP