Pathway to Japanese Literature
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| Original Title | 祭の夜 |
|---|---|
| Author | 平林 初之輔 |
| Genre | Popular Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | On a sweltering August night in 1926 Kyoto, amid the humid chaos of the Jizō Bon festival, shadows twist around Shimaida Lodgings—a moneylender’s den steeped in greed. Detectives lurk near its back gate, tracking a furtive figure who slips inside like smoke. Inside, a masked intruder binds the miserly landlord, burns incriminating loan records, and vanishes with a fortune, leaving only ashes and a cryptic taunt. The moneylender’s daughter lies drugged in her room, her secret lover—a factory foreman with a missing hand—caught in a web of suspicion. As dawn breaks, clues blur: scorched fingerprints, a fragment of a bankbook clutched in burned hands, and a brazen letter mocking the police. Detectives scramble through moonlit alleys, outwitted at every turn by a thief who flaunts their incompetence. Beneath the veneer of a lovers’ tryst and bureaucratic bungling simmers a darker game—one where justice wears a mask, and vengeance dances just beyond reach. |
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