The Guardian Dogs and Other Tales

A cry rises from the ruins of a village shrine. A child recognises a woman no one has told them about. Far inside a tropical forest, a young actor enters a tomb and does not return.

In these four tales, Okamoto Kidō lets ordinary conversation lead towards the inexplicable. A visit home, a night’s shelter in the mountains and a walk after the theatre become occasions for stories of desire, guilt and the uneasy claims of the dead. The witnesses offer explanations; certainty remains elusive.

Three essays reveal another side of the same storyteller: questioning the conventions of revenge, watching the bustle of a stockbroker’s office, remembering a coveted dictionary and retracing a boyhood journey across the dark fields of Tōkyō. Together they bring the uncanny into conversation with the ordinary losses of a changing world.