Constellation

Sapporo, autumn 1900. In Hakukansha, a whitewashed government building left over from the colonial days of Hokkaidō, a handful of college students live, argue and dream on the threshold of the new century. Hoshino Seiitsu, brilliant and consumptive, coughs through the nights and plans his escape to Tokyo. Gentle Sono, who would rather be alone in his laboratory, is asked to carry a letter to a shy girl named Nui and finds himself drawn into her quiet life. Nishiyama declaims about the French Revolution; Kakie teaches night school and wanders the licensed quarter; the half-blind, hard-drinking Watase begins to court Nui. Far from the dormitory, Seiitsu’s sister Osei faces a marriage to a moneylender that her poor family cannot afford to refuse.

Arishima Takeo’s last novel, published in 1922 as the first volume of a longer work he did not live to continue, is a tender, ironic portrait of young people on the edge of the world: their ambitions, desires, fears and hesitations, and the small, clear hopes that survive them. It ends with Sono on the night train out of Sapporo.

This complete, unabridged translation is made directly from the Japanese, with a translator’s note, endnotes on period terms and source information.