Mr. Kani’s Visiting Day and Other Writings

A writer sets aside just one hour a month to receive visitors, then finds himself surrounded by friends, aspiring authors, salesmen, and people with private troubles. Mr. Kani’s Visiting Day turns a carefully planned afternoon into a comedy of interruptions and frustrated conversations. In Two Men Toying with Life, two strangers meet beside a railway embankment, each determined to die and each increasingly entangled in the other’s story.

The accompanying writings consider exhausted theatrical fashions, an actress remembered through a doll in mourning, and the awkward mixture of Japanese and Western customs. Two childhood sketches observe illness, abandonment, and a girl’s growing awareness of her mother’s sorrow. A final essay recounts the tangled artistic and personal relations of French actresses and playwrights, from Molière to Sarah Bernhardt.

Kishida Kunio’s irony sits beside tenderness and unease throughout this complete selection. Dialogue, pauses, stage directions, and the sketches’ short lines are preserved, with concise notes explaining names, allusions, historical claims, and textual uncertainties.