Pathway to Japanese Literature

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

Dew on Bush CloverAuthor: Izumi Kyoka

Original Title	露萩
Author	泉鏡花
Genre	Detective & Mystery
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	On a sweltering midsummer night, guests gather at a secluded inn for a ghost-story ritual steeped in eerie tradition. Among them is Makishin, a painter drawn into the event by Shirao, its enigmatic organizer. The atmosphere thickens with the arrival of a brash, drunken monk—self-proclaimed exorcist of the Kon Genkyō sect—who disrupts proceedings with crude boasts and a phallic wooden staff. Shadows deepen as whispers circulate of past tragedies: a broken memorial tablet, rumored to belong to a drowned woman, lies in a dimly lit pavilion draped with moth-eaten mosquito nets and haunted by oily dragonflies. Makishin’s unease grows when a spectral woman with luminous skin and ink-black hair emerges from the crowd, her gratitude laced with sorrow. As the monk’s taunts escalate and the tablet’s cursed history unravels, reality blurs—faces shift in mirrors, damp sandals cling like grave soil, and unseen forces coil beneath the ryokan’s polished floors. By midnight, what began as macabre theater spirals toward violence, binding living and dead in a dance of unresolved anguish.