Pathway to Japanese Literature

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

Phantom CityAuthor: Murō Saisei

Original Title	幻影の都市
Author	室生犀星
Genre	Modern Short Fiction
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	In a shadow-drenched metropolis, a solitary man drowns in obsessions—women’s faces from lurid advertisements paper his walls, their imagined warmth a balm for his isolation. Nightly, he drifts through neon-lit alleys, drawn to the city’s pulse yet repelled by its decadence. His fractured reality shifts when he encounters the Electric Girl: a pale, enigmatic figure rumored to carry a lethal charge. Her skin glows like gaslight; her gaze holds whirlpools of unspoken histories. Whispers follow her—trees tremble at her touch, children suffocate in her care—yet her vulnerability mirrors his unraveling psyche. As their paths cross in dim streets and desolate parks, his fixation deepens, entwined with myths of a foreboding tower looming over the city. The metropolis thrums with secrets, each flickering light a siren call to oblivion, leaving him suspended between desire and dread in a world where beauty and danger pulse as one.