Pathway to Japanese Literature

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

LaboratoryAuthor: Arishima Takeo

Original Title	実験室
Author	有島武郎
Genre	Modern Short Fiction
Author Type	Male Author
Summary	A young physician’s unwavering devotion to science collides with grief when his wife dies under disputed circumstances. Convinced her death resulted from miliary tuberculosis—contrary to colleagues’ consensus—he resolves to perform her autopsy himself, determined to prove his diagnosis. His cold rationality sparks outrage among relatives, particularly his brother, who condemns the act as heartless desecration. Yet the doctor clings to clinical detachment: to him, her corpse is an object of study, a battleground for academic truth. As he methodically prepares instruments in his sterile laboratory, tension mounts between brothers—one consumed by loss, the other by obsession. The autopsy unfolds with surgical precision, observers dissecting organs as dispassionately as data points. But when confronted with visceral remnants of his wife’s suffering—a stomach filled with swallowed blood—his facade fractures. Haunted by her final agonized pleas and the hollow triumph of vindication, he confronts the cost of sacrificing humanity to ambition. Shadows of regret seep through cracks in his clinical armor, revealing a man severed from life’s warmth by the very science he worships.