Pathway to Japanese Literature
Discover Japan's stories—across time, across language.
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| Original Title | 道中記 |
|---|---|
| Author | 種田 山頭火 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | A wandering poet’s journey unfolds through fragmented days of spring, where fleeting beauty collides with wartime austerity. Across mist-clad mountains and bustling ports, he navigates a world in flux—steel mills belch smoke beside blooming plums, and cherry blossoms scatter near munitions factories. Sake cups offer fleeting solace as vows against drinking shatter; train stations and cheap inns become transient sanctuaries. Conversations flicker with kindness and loneliness—bank clerks, hospital patients, fellow wanderers—each encounter a mirror to his restless soul. Haiku punctuate the chaos: a mother gathering rice grains in the wind, seagulls over straits, the eerie stillness of slag heaps sprouting buds. Beneath the surface simmers a battle—against addiction, aging eyesight, and the weight of existence—yet moments of grace persist: moonlit baths, shared meals on grass, the stubborn vitality of wildflowers. This is not a tale of destinations, but a mosaic of survival, where every step breathes poetry into the unraveling fabric of a world at war with itself. |
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