窮死
In a cheap eatery, a destitute man drifts toward his end.
- Authentic text: the opening of a public-domain original
- Word-by-word glosses and translation in English or Chinese, free
- Tap a word for its meaning, listen to the sentence, save words
- Reads in any phone or desktop browser, nothing to download
Want to read your own Japanese light novels? Read the guide →
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.
About the book
The passage shows a poor man called Bunkō entering a cheap little restaurant near Kudanzaka at dusk in late spring, coughing and saying he has not long to live, with only six sen in hand. The laborers around him quietly buy him food and drink, and the dim, hushed scene gives a heavy, suffocating sense of a man nearing his end.
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.
土方 means a labourer in civil engineering work, doing carrying and digging; 立ちんぼう refers to a day labourer who stood at street-corner hiring spots in the early morning waiting for employers to pick them. Both were among the lowest-paid manual workers in the city at the time, paid by the day, with no work when it rained.
This refers to the Yōikuin asylum in Tokyo, which took in beggars, vagrants, and the poor and sick with no one to depend on. Although admission was free, there were screening procedures on entry and residents' movements were restricted—hence Dobashi's remark that it is 'a lot of trouble and hard to get into'.
Room size is expressed by the number of tatami mats; a three-mat room, about five square metres, is extremely small. That a three-mat room also had to hold two bed spaces shows how cramped the living conditions were.
About the author
Doppo Kunikida (30 August 1871 – 23 June 1908) was a Japanese author of novels and romantic poetry during the Meiji period. He is noted as one of the inventors of Japanese naturalism.
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.
Do I need to pay or sign up?
Library books are free to read without an account. Other gloss languages and importing your own texts need an account and credits.
What level is it?
This one is marked “Advanced”. Every word is glossed, so you can keep reading even with a small vocabulary.
Can I use another gloss language?
English and Chinese glosses are prepared in advance; signed-in readers can generate other languages.