Sea Fog and Other Writings

A voyage between Muroran and Hakodate becomes an encounter with terror when dense fog closes around a small steamship. In another story, a boy’s escape from the sea leaves him with a memory he cannot escape: his younger sister, still struggling in the waves.

These five works reveal the range of Arishima Takeo’s imagination. A generous literary essay considers Mizuno Senko’s unfinished artistic promise. “The Swallow and the Prince” retells a familiar fable with a strikingly different course and ending. A candid letter weighs the place of a bourgeois artist amid the rise of working-class consciousness.

Tenderness and discomfort stand together throughout the collection. Kindness demands sacrifice, gratitude coexists with shame, and intellectual conviction offers no simple refuge from personal doubt.