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黄粱夢

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Lu Sheng lives a whole life in a dream before his millet is cooked.

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Original language: JapaneseLevel: Intermediate1,000 characters · ≈ 4 minSource: 青空文库

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Sample: three-line reading

Each word has its meaning in this sentence underneath, and each sentence has a full translation. Read the original and glance down only when you need to.

盧生Lu Sheng (a person's name)はtopic marker死ぬto dieのだ(explanatory) it is that / he was going toとthat (quotation marker)思ったthought
Lu Sheng thought he was going to die.
目の前がbefore his eyes / his field of vision暗くdarkなってbecame (and)子や孫のof his children and grandchildrenすすり泣くsobbing / softly crying声がthe voices (subject)だんだんgradually遠い所へinto the distance消えてfaded (and)しまうcompletely / ended up
Everything before his eyes grew dark, and the soft crying of his children and grandchildren slowly faded away into the distance.
そうしてand so; then眼に見えないunseen; invisible to the eye分銅がa weight (of a scale)足の先へto the tips of his feetついてでもいるようにas if (it) were attached体がhis body下へ下へとdeeper and deeper; downward and downward沈んで行くkept sinkingと思うとjust as he thought (that)急にsuddenlyはっとwith a start; startled何かにby something驚かされてwas startled (by it) and思わずwithout thinking; involuntarily眼を大きく開いたopened his eyes wide
Then, as if an unseen weight were pulling at his feet, his body sank deeper and deeper—just as he thought this, something suddenly startled him, and he opened his eyes wide without thinking.
するとthereupon; and then枕pillowもとat the side of (the pillow)にはat (that place)依然としてjust as before; still道士Daoist priestのof呂翁Lu Weng (name)が(subject marker)坐っているwas sitting
And there, by his pillow, sat the Daoist Lu Weng, just as before.

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About the book

The passage has Lu Sheng tell the Taoist Lü Weng about the whole life he lived in a dream—marriage, passing the exams, rising to high office, exile after slander, vindication, and death at over eighty—waking to find the millet still uncooked. After Lü Weng urges him to see through honor and disgrace, Lu Sheng replies that precisely because it is a dream, he wants to live truly until it too ends, giving the quiet prose a stubborn undertone of will to live.

Cultural notes (selection)

Background a translation can’t carry: social roles, history and allusions. While reading, tap “Note” at the end of a sentence to see them all.

主人の炊いでいた黍も、未だに熟さないらしい Allusion

This is the source of the proverb 'a millet dream' (a fool's paradise). In the Tang-dynasty chuanqi tale 'The World Inside a Pillow' by Shen Jiji, the scholar Lu falls asleep in an inn at Handan using a pillow lent by the Daoist Lü, and in his dream lives through a whole lifetime of glory. When he wakes, the millet the innkeeper was steaming is still not cooked. Akutagawa's piece rewrites this closing scene in modern Japanese.

清河の崔氏の女 Allusion

In the original 'The World Inside a Pillow,' Lu marries in his dream a daughter of the Cui clan of Qinghe. The Cui of Qinghe were one of the most illustrious aristocratic families of the Tang dynasty (one of the 'five surnames and seven clans'), so marrying a Cui daughter meant alliance with a great house—the first step toward worldly success in the original tale. This is why Lu mentions this marriage first.

中書門下平章事 History

Short for 'Concurrently Grand Councilor of the Secretariat and Chancellery' (同中書門下平章事), the title of a Tang-dynasty grand councilor. The posts Lu holds in his dream—investigating censor, drafter of imperial documents, director of the Secretariat, enfeoffed as Duke of Yan, exiled to Huanzhou—all appear in the official career recorded in 'The World Inside a Pillow.' Huanzhou, in what is now northern Vietnam, was a remote place of exile for Tang officials.

About the author

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1 March 1892 – 24 July 1927), also known by his art name Chōkōdō Shujin, was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period who is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story". He died by suicide at the age of 35 through an overdose of barbital, and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him.

How the glosses are made

Word glosses and sentence translations are generated in context by AI models (DeepSeek and Zhipu GLM), and every word is checked to have a gloss. AI can make mistakes; you can report problems from the book page.

FAQ

Is this the original text?

Yes. The library holds the opening section of the public-domain original, taken from 青空文库.

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This one is marked “Intermediate”. Every word is glossed, so you can keep reading even with a small vocabulary.

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