My Father’s Death and Other Writings

A school burns on a dry spring night. For an eight-year-old boy, the loss of its clock tower is inseparable from his father’s face; what follows exposes the distance between private grief, public admiration and a child’s uncertain understanding. My Father’s Death preserves those shifting feelings without simplifying them.

In The Magician, a young commercial playwright watches an itinerant performer audition for a theater job. The tricks entertain, but a conversation about earning a living brings the writer’s own compromised ambitions into focus. The Boat Race follows a reluctant student coxswain into training quarters, rivalry, teamwork and a contest decided by the narrowest margin. Its celebration reveals how accidents become a triumphant story afterward.

The opening essay, The “I-Novel” and the “State-of-Mind Novel,” sets out Kume Masao’s argument for personal experience as the foundation of prose art, while asking what truthful expression requires. These four complete writings follow the supplied collection order and include notes on literary terms, theater practice, original readings and the historical setting.