Tobacco and the Devil and Other Stories

A devil disguised as a missionary’s companion grows a mysterious plant in Japan and wagers with a curious cattle dealer. A gentle woodcutter receives three extraordinary dogs from mountain gods, only to discover that human treachery can be more dangerous than monsters.

Tobacco and the Devil and Other Stories brings together seven works by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. In Father, schoolboys turn a station waiting room into a theater of mockery, until one joke exposes a painful truth. In Unrequited Love, a geisha recounts a romance that neither distance nor time can make possible.

The Monkey follows a young naval cadet whose exhilaration at catching a thief gives way to shame. The Monkey and the Crab imagines what courts, newspapers, and respectable opinion would make of a familiar folktale’s revenge. Genkaku’s Mountain Retreat closes the collection with an unsparing portrait of illness, jealousy, money, and dependence.