お菓子の大舞踏会
A boy who eats only sweets is invited to the sweets’ grand ball.
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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.
About the book
Goro, a boy obsessed with sweets, secretly eats a whole box of candy and falls asleep, where he sees the sweets he ate gathered inside him wearing colorful costumes like actors. The opening follows him from his parents hiding all the sweets away, moving briskly with a childlike innocence and a touch of strange tension.
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.
Oil paper is paper treated with oil to make it moisture-proof. From the Meiji period onward it was commonly used as wrapping paper for confectionery and medicines. Wrapping a box of Western sweets in oil paper, tying it with cord, and sending it by post was the usual way of mailing food at the time.
「黒ん坊」 is a colloquial term for Black people in modern Japan. Here it is used as a personification because chocolate is black; it was a customary expression in children's books of the period, though it is regarded as discriminatory language today.
About the author
Yumeno Kyūsaku (4 January 1889 – 11 March 1936) was a Japanese author whose pen name roughly means "a person who always dreams"; his real name was Sugiyama Yasumichi. He wrote detective novels and also worked as a Zen priest, post office director and sub-lieutenant, and is known for his avant-gardism and surrealistic, wildly imaginative and bizarre narratives.
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 “Beginner”. 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.