Uncle and Other Stories

A prosperous widower delights in his beautiful niece until she chooses a life beyond his influence. An only child discovers that the brother he has imagined may really exist. A laborer claims the work of reclaiming land as his own, even though the soil belongs to another man.

In these three stories, Toyoshima Yoshio follows family feeling into difficult territory. Generosity mingles with resentment, secrecy alters the meaning of kinship, and pride in labor becomes inseparable from loneliness. The characters speak plainly, yet the feelings beneath their conversations remain unsettled.

First published in 1924 and 1925, “Uncle,” “Siblings,” and “Land” move between urban households and rural fields. Their closely observed gestures, silences, and changing seasons give ordinary lives an unexpected intensity. Toyoshima, a Japanese novelist and translator, writes about intimacy without making it simple.