The Fatalist and Other Stories

A stranger on a deserted Kamakura beach hides bottles beneath the sand and asks whether anyone can escape fate. His confession gives this collection its title, but Kunikida Doppo’s seven works approach human vulnerability from many directions.

An exhausted businessman struggles through a single day. A homeless laborer finds kindness that cannot secure his future. A jealous husband weighs two women against his confused idea of chastity. In a seaside tea shop, a quiet oil seller prepares to leave for wartime labor, carrying gifts he cannot bring himself to offer. Elsewhere, an extraordinary Chinese stone draws its owner into an uncanny struggle, while four prose poems follow clouds, travelers, seeds, and a roadside plum tree.

First published between 1898 and 1907, these works combine closely observed social life with lyrical reflection and unsettling storytelling. Doppo, a central writer of the Meiji period, gives ordinary gestures room to reveal loneliness, affection, and doubt. This complete English collection preserves every supplied work, with brief notes on names, cultural details, and passages whose uncertainty matters.