Dr. Yatrakan Sami's Chair and Other Early Stories

An American con on a night train. A Japanese sailor shanghaied in Kobe. A swindler in Edo slang. A fire in a village. And a palm-reading beggar in Colombo whose chair holds a terrible secret.

Five early stories by Maki Itsuma, written for the pulp detective magazines of the 1920s by the man who also wrote the Tange Sazen novels under another pen name. Wry, rapid, and sometimes shocking, they range from the American road to the Indian Ocean. The title story, a horror piece built around a travel brochure and a wheeled chair, is among the strangest of them.

A new English translation from the Japanese, with endnotes. Content note: the title story is deliberately offensive in a colonial voice and implies sexual violence.