The Haunted Ginkgo

A young wife sits beyond the charcoal brazier in a dim Kanazawa house. When the boy lodging upstairs returns, their talk turns from a cup of tea and her hairstyle to marriage, a dead sister, and a child she cannot forget.

O-Tei is praised as a devoted wife, yet her private account reveals grief, resentment, and fear of the world’s judgment. The boy calls her Sister when she wears a ginkgo twist, seeing in her the sister he has lost. Their intimacy offers comfort while awakening her husband’s suspicion. As illness deepens the household’s darkness, care and hatred become frighteningly difficult to separate.

First published in 1896, Izumi Kyōka’s story joins intense domestic conversation to an uncanny final invitation. The complete new English translation preserves all fifteen sections, the voices of the wife and boy, and the unsettling appeal to the reader. Brief notes explain historical terms, name readings, and source inconsistencies. Kyōka was a major Japanese writer of imaginative, lyrical, and supernatural fiction. AI-assisted translation, prepared and edited by Valentin Sarić.