Three Windows and Other Stories

On a battleship, a small kindness and three deaths linger in the minds of officers long after the immediate events. Before a feudal lord, a samurai explains how his determination to be fair may have made him unjust. An apparently ordinary world repeatedly opens onto troubling depths.

Three Windows and Other Stories gathers five works by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. A Strange Island turns the cultivation and sale of vegetables into a grotesque satire of taste and literary judgment. Yonosuke’s Tale questions a pleasure-seeker’s astonishing record through an encounter aboard a ferry.

In Two Letters, a teacher appeals to the chief of police for protection from rumor and persecution. His account of doubles leads through theaters, city streets, and his own study, leaving the reader to weigh his insistence against what his words reveal.