Lakeside Notes and Other Stories

A sick, penniless writer runs away to a hot spring high in the Nikkō mountains, meaning to write an apology to the wife he has left in the north. Instead he drinks, watches a village boat race by moonlight, and waits for news of a dying friend.

Kasai Zenzō (1887–1928), called the "god of the I-novel," wrote these four stories in the last productive years of his short life. Together they follow his bond with Osei, the temple teahouse girl who carried his meals up the stone steps of Kenchōji, nursed him, quarreled with him, and bore his child: from a rueful portrait of her devotion, through a drunken return to Kamakura and the celebrated "Lakeside Notes," to a lodging-house pregnancy and its unhappy end.

This collection contains Osei, Young Leaves of the Chinquapin, Lakeside Notes, and Stillborn. Each is translated complete and unabridged from Japanese, with a translator's note, brief endnotes, and source information.