Soil

The great novel of Meiji tenant farming, in a new English translation.

When Oshina falls ill after a cold winter day of peddling konnyaku, her husband Kanji is far away digging a canal on the Tone River. What follows is the story of a poor tenant-farming family of the Kinugawa plain, the husband, the daughter Otsugi, the small son Yokichi and the old father-in-law, through years of debt, weather, village obligation and quiet endurance.

Serialized in the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun in 1910 and praised by Natsume Soseki in the preface included here, Tsuchi records the speech, food, tools and superstitions of the poorest farmers with a patience no Japanese novelist had attempted. It is hard to read, and it is meant to be.