A Wayward Son

Kamakura, one spring in the early 1920s. A twelve-year-old boy, living alone with his sick, drinking, penniless father in a dark temple room, is afraid of a scolding and does not come home. For three days he sleeps in a storeroom, goes from shop to shop asking to be taken on as an errand boy, steals two broken watches, and is caught by the police. Then he tells a story about two older boys who forced him into it, and his father, desperate to believe him, drags him through the streets of Kamakura as a decoy to catch criminals who may never have existed.

Kasai Zenzō (1887–1928), called the "god of the I-novel," wrote this account of his own son's disgrace soon after it happened and called it "truly a record of fact." It is a painful, unsparing confession, less of the boy's guilt than of the father's, and a vivid portrait of Kamakura in the 1920s: its streetcars, police boxes, watch shops, temple steps and spring crowds.

Translated complete and unabridged from Japanese, with a translator's note, brief endnotes, and source information.