Plovers

A student on a year's leave from school returns to a lodging on a small island in the Inland Sea. In a house above the tangerine orchards he meets a young woman named Fuji, who greets him as though she had been waiting for him for days. Over two spring days the two of them dress him in a borrowed haori, watch a child's tin-can camera, laugh at a village tale of a papier-mache fox, and look at carp in a garden pool. Then, with no warning, she is taken away by a stranger, and the narrator is left holding a single red silk sleeve.

First published in 1906 in the journal Hototogisu, Suzuki Miekichi's Chidori is a short, shimmering work of early modern Japanese fiction, famous for its dreamlike scenes, its ear for dialect and its refusal to explain. This new English translation is made directly from the Japanese, complete, with endnotes on period details.

Translated by Valentin Sarić. AI-assisted translation.