A Postcard and Dysentery

A young village teacher lends money to a student who is trying to walk home after his father’s death. When a grateful postcard arrives, its clumsy English and questionable dates become material for staff-room jokes. What began as an impatient gesture of kindness shifts beneath the teacher’s own recollections.

In “Dysentery,” a timid Tenrikyō missionary imagines winning an impoverished mountain village to his faith. He finds a first convert, cheap lodging, and an unexpected taste for life. Then an epidemic gives his promises a terrible weight, and fear tests every support he has learned to depend upon.

Ishikawa Takuboku (1886–1912), best known for his poetry, brings sharp observation to these stories of compromised intentions, rural poverty, and fragile self-understanding. Both first appeared in Subaru in 1909. This new English translation follows the supplied collection in full, including its duplicate occurrence of “A Postcard,” with brief notes on period terms and textual problems. AI-assisted translation, prepared and edited by Valentin Sarić.