The Descendants of Cain and Other Stories

A giant of a man walks out of the wind with a lean horse, a limping wife and a starving baby, and signs himself onto a tenant farm below the snows of Mount Yōtei. Hirooka Jin’emon fears no one, pays no rent, and wants only to rise; what the land, the landlord and his own nature do to him is the story of “The Descendants of Cain,” Arishima Takeo’s harshest and most celebrated tale of Hokkaidō.

Four more works complete this new selection. In “Clare Leaves the World,” the young Clare of Assisi dreams, remembers and finally slips out of her father’s house by night to join Francis. In “The Laboratory,” a brilliant pathologist insists on performing the autopsy on his own wife to prove his diagnosis right. “Half a Day” spends a snowy Sunday with two young men on the edge of marriage and disillusion. And “The Death of Domomata” is a one-act comedy in which five penniless painters stage the death of one of their number to raise the price of his pictures.

Complete and unabridged, translated directly from the Japanese, with a translator’s note, endnotes and source information.