押絵の奇蹟
A woman writes a long letter in secret about a raised-cloth picture.
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About the book
"Oshie no Kiseki" is a story by detective fiction writer Kyūsaku Yumeno, published in the January 1929 issue of the magazine Shin Seinen. It follows a beautiful pianist suffering from tuberculosis who, reflecting on the secret of her birth, writes a long letter to a kabuki actor who looks exactly like her mother. Unlike the grotesque worldview common in Yumeno's work, it carries a pure, flowing beauty; Edogawa Ranpo praised it as rare fine prose in detective fiction.
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.
女形 (onnagata) refers to male actors in kabuki who specialise in playing female roles. They must train from childhood in feminine gestures, speech, and deportment, and onnagata is one of the role categories of kabuki.
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.
Summary prepared with AI from Wikipedia: 押絵の奇蹟 (CC BY-SA)
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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What level is it?
This one is marked “Advanced”. Every word is glossed, so you can keep reading even with a small vocabulary.
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English and Chinese glosses are prepared in advance; signed-in readers can generate other languages.