三角形の恐怖
by Juza Unno
An old man confesses a youthful horror connected with a triangle.
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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
An elderly man begins recounting, as an act of atonement, the terror connected to a triangle from his younger days. The opening describes his student years living across from a dark cedar grove, where the gloomy surroundings turned his cheerful nature into brooding and gave rise to strange ideas about obsessive fixation.
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.
Refers to Emperor Taishō. He died in December 1926 and was buried in February 1927 at the Tama Mausoleum near Asakawa (present-day Hachiōji City) in western Tokyo. The phrase "twenty years ago" in the text takes this event as its point of reference.
Refers to city railway lines then operated by the Ministry of Railways (state-run); people called them "shōsen" to distinguish them from private railways, corresponding to today's JR Chūō Line and others. The term died out after the lines were renamed Japanese National Railways in 1949.
Refers to the poet Ishikawa Takuboku (1886–1912), whose collections such as "Ichiaku no Suna" (A Handful of Sand) used colloquial language in tanka, lamenting youth, poverty and the anxieties of the age, and had great influence among young students. "Takuboku-bari" means imitating his style.
About the author
Unno Jūza (December 26, 1897 – May 17, 1949), born Sano Shōichi, was a Japanese novelist regarded as the founding father of Japanese science fiction.
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 “Intermediate”. 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.