Pathway to Japanese Literature
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| Original Title | 河原の対面 |
|---|---|
| Author | 小寺 菊子 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Female Author |
| Summary | In a northern land where spring’s warmth struggles against lingering winter, a family’s fragile peace shatters under the weight of greed. Tamezō, once a failed speculator, reinvents himself as a merciless moneylender, clawing back losses through exploitation. His latest debtor, Gen’emon—a weathered farmer—confronts him in a violent clash that spills from whispered conspiracies into public disgrace. As the men brawl, Tamezō’s daughter Omachi flees to the eerie sanctuary of the storehouse, haunted by relics of her father’s cruelty and the spectral presence of a “storehouse deity” she imagines judging their sins. Police intervention exposes the family’s shame, unraveling their standing in the community. Through Omachi’s eyes—a child torn between loyalty and revulsion—the story traces a household’s descent into isolation, shadowed by secrets and societal scorn. As seasons turn, whispers of scandal harden into irreversible fate, leaving Omachi to grapple with a legacy of moral decay and her own yearning for escape. |
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