Pathway to Japanese Literature
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Straw HatAuthor: Hori Tatsuo
| Original Title | 麦藁帽子 |
|---|---|
| Author | 堀 辰雄 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | A fifteen-year-old boy’s summer unfolds in a coastal village, where childhood innocence collides with awakening desire. A mishap during a baseball game leaves him humiliated before a thirteen-year-old girl—her straw hat adorned with cherries framing a face he suddenly sees anew. Over sunlit days of swimming, shell-collecting, and playful rivalry with her brothers, their bond deepens, tinged with unspoken tension. Yet time shifts dynamics: she grows distant, her melancholic beauty shadowed by a sickly suitor, while he grapples with jealousy and his own metamorphosis into adulthood. Letters, misunderstandings, and fleeting encounters mark years of longing, until an earthquake shatters their world. Amid chaos and loss, a final moment of shared vulnerability under starlit rubble reignites buried emotions—but destiny pulls them apart. Through hazy memories of sun-bleached straw hats and salt-stained summers, the story traces youth’s ephemeral glow and love’s quiet ache, leaving unanswered whether fleeting touches in the dark were mere illusion or something more eternal. |
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