The Devil’s Treasure and Other Stories

A hunter accepts a devil’s horns, claws, hooves, and magic tail, hoping to make his fortune. The hunting is excellent, but ordinary life becomes unexpectedly difficult. In a seaside sickroom, a writer watches his own resentment grow as a devoted friend visits. A schoolgirl smiles at a young monk across a temple garden, beginning a history she cannot easily put behind her.

These three complete stories reveal the range of Toyoshima Yoshio’s fiction. The playful bargain of “The Devil’s Treasure” stands beside the searching interior monologue of “A Foolish Day” and the disturbed recollections of “A Woman’s Journal.” Affection and apprehension mingle, while familiar surroundings become strangely charged.

First published in Japanese magazines in 1920 and 1929, the stories move from a hunter’s village to a convalescent household and the streets around a Tokyo temple. Toyoshima, a Japanese novelist and translator, gives ordinary gestures and passing thoughts a quietly troubling intensity.