Pathway to Japanese Literature

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

Old CapitalAuthor: Sakaguchi Ango

Original Title	古都
Author	坂口安吾
Genre	Historical Fiction
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	In 1937 Kyoto, a disillusioned writer flees Tokyo’s suffocating routines, seeking refuge in a ramshackle lunchbox shop nestled in Fushimi’s shadowy alleys. His new world is a mosaic of decay: crumbling walls, overflowing gutters, and a cast of societal castoffs clinging to existence. The shop’s owners—a domineering ex-beauty and her withered, groveling husband—host nightly gatherings where failed artists, drunken fortune-tellers, and scheming drifters collide over cheap sake and hollow laughter. Amidst this squalor, the narrator navigates a makeshift Go club, absurdist routines, and encounters with figures like Seki, a jobless dreamer, and Nonbiri-san, a hapless tailor trapped in others’ schemes. Kyoto’s ancient grandeur lingers as a distant mirage, overshadowed by grime and desperation. Yet within this twilight realm of frayed dignity and dark humor, fleeting connections flicker—a woman’s tearful farewell at Tokyo Station, the old man’s deluded devotion to estranged kin—hinting at fragile resilience in life’s forgotten corners.