Rebellion

Inoue Shūhei survives on borrowed money and the small income he earns tutoring a boy. The household offers him warmth, companionship, and a dangerous hope: his attachment to Yasuko, the married woman who cares for his pupil, begins to dominate his inner life.

A dead man’s diary brings another love and another suffering into view. Around Shūhei, friends speculate, drink, and trade stories, while a café waitress becomes both a refuge and a source of confusion. Private anxieties pass into public rumor, and even kindness becomes difficult to separate from jealousy.

Toyoshima Yoshio follows the student’s shifting thoughts with close attention to poverty, loneliness, self-deception, and the desire to break free. First serialized in 1921, this novel moves from quiet domestic encounters toward an act of defiance whose consequences remain beyond its final page.