Pathway to Japanese Literature

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

Oshi-e and the Traveling ManAuthor: Edogawa Ranpo

Original Title	押絵と旅する男
Author	江戸川乱歩
Genre	Modern Short Fiction
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	On a hazy day blurred between dream and reality, a man returns from witnessing a mirage in Uozu—a spectral vision of shifting sails and warped horizons that leaves him unmoored. Boarding an eerily empty evening train, he encounters a gaunt traveler whose unsettling presence is matched only by his peculiar possession: a faded oshi-e textile artwork depicting a young woman and an aged man in Western attire. The stranger’s obsidian hair and wrinkled face defy time, his manner oscillating between courtly charm and feverish intensity. When he insists the narrator peer through antique binoculars at the oshi-e, its figures stir with uncanny vitality—the woman’s flushed skin pulses with life, while her elderly companion’s anguished expression hints at decades trapped in a painted purgatory. As the train hurtles through darkness, the traveler spins a fragmented tale of vanished brothers, forbidden love, and a cursed peepshow that swallowed a soul. Reality frays at the edges: Is this a shared delusion born of mirage-induced madness, or a glimpse into a parallel world where art imprisons the living? By journey’s end, only unease lingers—and the haunting sense that some boundaries, once crossed, cannot be mended.