A Confession at Dusk

As evening light fades from a hospital room, the playwright Ōkawa Ryūtarō prepares to tell his physician the truth. Once celebrated as an artistic genius, he has watched a rival eclipse his fame and has been unable to escape the memory of his wife’s violent death.

The newspapers called that death a robber’s crime. Ōkawa’s confession complicates their account, exposing jealousy, suspicion, and the dangerous certainty of intuition. Yet his physician is more than an impartial listener, and the dying man’s final questions threaten to reveal another hidden life.

Hamao Shirō builds a psychological mystery through complete newspaper reports, legal argument, and successive versions of a single terrible night. This unabridged English translation preserves the final aftermath as well as the hospital confession. Notes clarify uncertain readings and the source’s historical legal and medical language without resolving its moral ambiguities. Translated directly from the Japanese. AI-assisted translation.