Until I Can Sing and Other Stories

A writer visits a young couple in a rented room outside Tokyo. Together they can dream of splendid futures, but even deciding when to leave proves almost impossible. At Tokyo Station, a country girl’s shopping expedition leaves another narrator stranded with an inconvenient fencing sword.

The world grows stranger in a village tavern nicknamed Auerbach’s. Drinkers converse in song, students quarrel over Greek etymology, and an aspiring singer rides out to prevent a duel. Ancient gods, borrowed horses, unpaid debts, and affectionate mockery mingle in a landscape of moonlit roads and wheat fields.

Other pieces turn toward the theater, sleepless nights, and a family’s troubled household. Around a pond, a young man’s resentment finds a disturbing outlet in the persecution of a deformed hen.