The Folding Briefcase and Other Stories

An aging writer buys a briefcase and imagines a little freedom from the burdens of home. His new possession accompanies him to a hotel, where conversation, theater outings, and the pleasures of the city offer a brief escape—until a telephone call summons him back.

The Folding Briefcase and Other Stories gathers five complete works by Tokuda Shūsei, first published between 1926 and 1928. Cinema seats become a measure of power within a love affair. Two writers discuss a neglected woman novelist whose books outlast her fame. A visit to a house beside the water sharpens jealousy and disappointment. A young musician, caught between artistic hopes, poverty, and several men’s expectations, struggles to find a life of her own.

These stories attend closely to the friction between kindness and control, intimacy and artistic observation. Their ordinary conversations reveal desires that their speakers cannot quite acknowledge. Tokuda Shūsei (1871–1943), a major writer associated with Japanese naturalism, brings a restrained, searching gaze to the vulnerable lives of writers, families, and lovers. AI-assisted translation.