痴人の復讐
At a club devoted to thrills, members discuss methods of murder.
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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
The text opens at a regular meeting of a "murder club," where members discuss ideal methods of killing, before an eye doctor begins recounting a story of patiently plotted revenge. The reading experience is unsettling in a quiet way: conversational, almost casual tone set against macabre subject matter keeps a low tension running underneath.
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.
A medical vocational school under the old pre-war system, the main institution for training physicians from the Meiji to the Taishō period, at a level below the old-system medical universities. Concealing the school's name as "T" was a common practice in Taishō-era fiction.
In Meiji- and Taishō-era medical education, German was an important language of instruction; anatomy and diagnostics terminology was mostly in German, and professors mixing German into their reprimands reflected the prevailing custom of the medical world at the time.
From the Japanese expression 「槍玉に挙げる」, meaning to single out someone as a target of attack or criticism (originally referring to picking a target for spear practice). Here it means there are too many objects of revenge, and the narrator does not know whom to strike first.
About the author
Kosakai Mitsuji (8 October 1890 – 1 April 1929), better known by the pen name Kosakai Fuboku, was a Japanese medical scientist and crime writer.
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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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 “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.