Pathway to Japanese Literature
Discover Japan's stories—across time, across language.
← Back
The Infant's Severed HeadAuthor: Tanaka Kōtarō
| Original Title | あかんぼの首 |
|---|---|
| Author | 田中 貢太郎 |
| Genre | Detective & Mystery |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | Kyōko, a woman haunted by lingering illness after a miscarriage, drifts between feverish reality and unsettling visions. Plagued by headaches and a persistent sense of dread, she fixates on fragmented memories of a coastal retreat with her husband—a place she hopes might heal her frayed nerves. But her fragile psyche unravels further as recurring dreams consume her: a moonlit house by the sea, a crying infant, and a hostile couple who attack her when she tries to approach their child. Each nightmare grows more visceral, blurring with waking life until bruises and phantom pains linger after she wakes. Her husband dismisses these episodes as neurasthenia, urging a restorative trip to the coast. Yet upon arrival, they encounter an eerily familiar house locals whisper is cursed—a place where a Tokyo family’s infant met a violent end. As Kyōko’s grip on reality fractures, shadows of her dreams seep into daylight, merging past and present into a disorienting labyrinth of guilt, longing, and terror. The line between delusion and truth dissolves, leaving her—and the reader—to question what specters emerge from a wounded mind… and what darkness waits in waking life. |
← Return to List← Return to TOP