Pathway to Japanese Literature

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

Chrysanthemum MatchAuthor: Izumi Kyoka

Original Title	菊あわせ
Author	泉鏡花
Genre	Popular Fiction
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	In a mist-shrouded coastal town, a painter reunites with a enigmatic monk whose presence stirs forgotten memories of childhood mysteries. Their conversation in a rustic inn drifts between steaming crab feasts and spectral visions—a woman with snow-pale shoulders glimpsed through rain-soaked crowds, chrysanthemum blossoms cradling fallen children, and whispered tales of a shrine haunted by vanished beauties. As autumn light filters through paper screens, the monk produces an exquisitely wrapped box containing delicate crafts of pressed flowers and silk, tied with cords that whisper of rituals older than the crumbling temple walls. Shadows lengthen with stories of women who dissolved like morning dew, their elegance preserved only in ukiyo-e prints and the monk’s cryptic keepsakes. Between sips of sake and the clatter of distant streetcars, past and present blur—train platforms become thresholds to forgotten lanes, steamed buns emit chrysanthemum perfume, and every rustle of silk suggests a ghostly hand reaching through time. What unfolds is a tapestry of longing and illusion, where art and memory dance like maple leaves caught in a shrine’s sacred wind.