A Dream and Other Writings

A painter exhausted by insomnia begins working with a model whose presence unsettles him. After a violent dream, he goes looking for her and finds that even an ordinary address can deepen his uncertainty. A Dream leaves its disturbing possibilities open.

In Ōkubo Koshū, Akutagawa examines a biographer who devoted decades to Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ii Naosuke. The essay moves through maxims, historical argument, and a warrior’s grief to ask what sympathy can reveal about the past—and what it may conceal.

The Early Life of Daidōji Shinsuke follows a young man shaped by a poor Tokyo household, hostility to school, an appetite for books, and uneasy friendships. His remembered world becomes a landscape of the mind, at once sharply observed and fiercely argued.