K’s Ascension and Other Writings

A man studying his shadow on a moonlit beach believes that his soul can ascend toward the moon. When he later drowns, an acquaintance offers a strange explanation while admitting that the true cause remains unknown. K’s Ascension brings Kajii Motojirō’s scrutiny of sensation, illness and imagination to an uncanny intensity.

Other writings follow a mountain walker into the consoling terror of darkness, discover a new road among suburban houses, and return to a childhood district where memory seems suddenly alive. After the Snow traces the anxieties of a young researcher and his pregnant wife through a winter landscape and an unexpected encounter.

Editorial afterwords and portraits of fellow writers reveal the small literary community around Aozora, with its illnesses, friendships, ambitions and everyday pleasures. A review of Kitagawa Fuyuhiko’s War explores how poems transform perception and suffering into new forms. These twelve complete writings, first published from 1925 to 1930, preserve Kajii’s shifts between lucid observation, affectionate humor and disquieting uncertainty, with brief notes on readings and literary references.