Pathway to Japanese Literature
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The Writhing OneAuthor: Kasai Zenzō
| Original Title | 蠢く者 |
|---|---|
| Author | 葛西 善蔵 |
| Genre | War & Social Literature |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | In the shadow of his father’s lingering death from chronic illness, a man grapples with fractured family ties and his own unraveling health. His father, once stubbornly determined to walk Tokyo’s chaotic streets despite swollen legs and frailty, becomes a haunting emblem of resilience—a resilience the narrator lacks as beriberi saps his strength and alcohol drowns his purpose. Amidst this decay, Osei, a woman bound to him by obligation and shared survival after a catastrophic earthquake, clings with feral tenacity. Their coexistence in a cramped boarding house spirals into volatile clashes—a cycle of guilt, violence, and desperate dependence. Letters from his neglected rural wife, pleading for meager support for their children, amplify his shame. Yet Osei’s raw defiance and cryptic references to buried secrets hint at a deeper entanglement neither can escape. As the narrator shuffles through Tokyo’s streets, retracing his father’s futile walks, he confronts ghosts of failure and the gnawing question: Can fractured lives mend, or do they merely writhe onward? |
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