Parent and Child

An aging father and his son travel to a remote Hokkaido farm as autumn darkens the fields. The father sees accounts to settle, a difficult contractor to outmaneuver, and land that might secure his children’s future. The son sees cold tenant huts, exhausted farmers, and a life built on compromises he cannot accept.

Their visit becomes an increasingly painful struggle over success, duty, money, and truth. A ledger exposes the son’s helplessness; a negotiation reveals his father’s ruthlessness. Yet beneath their anger lies an attachment neither can easily explain.

First published in May 1923, Parent and Child is a concentrated story by Arishima Takeo, one of modern Japan’s major writers. Its mountain setting and close attention to awkward silences give a familiar family conflict an unsettling depth.