Mold

A writer struggles to make a living while his household grows around him. For Sasamura and Ogin, affection offers little protection against unpaid bills, cramped rooms, illness, and the exhausting work of raising children. Their quarrels expose both the fragility of their bond and the unequal burdens that sustain it.

Mold moves through rented houses, crowded Tokyo streets, visits to friends, family crises, and journeys away from home. Its drama accumulates in ordinary gestures: a meal prepared, a payment delayed, a sick child watched through the night. Neither partner can easily escape the habits that draw them together and wear them down.

Tokuda Shūsei (1872–1943), a major Japanese naturalist novelist, gives domestic life a patient and unsettling intensity. First serialized in 1911, this complete English translation preserves the novel’s seventy-nine sections and its unresolved tensions. AI-assisted translation, prepared and edited by Valentin Sarić.