朝飯
May comes, and a weather-station clerk finds his routine unbearable.
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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 follows a weather station technician in the mountains who finds May hard to endure, as routine observations stir lonely memories of his own drifting life. On a day off, a travel-worn student who has run out of money and not yet eaten breakfast comes asking for help, striking a chord with the narrator's own past.
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.
技手 (gishu) was a technical staff rank in Japanese government offices from the Meiji era to before the war, ranking below 技師 (gishi) and responsible for hands-on work such as field observation. Local weather stations were often set up on high ground in cities, making regular daily observations of气压, wind, and cloud forms and reporting them to the Central Meteorological Observatory in Tokyo.
A 書生 was a young man of the Meiji era who had left home to study or seek work, typically dressed in kimono and hakama and travelling light. "旅窶れのした書生体" describes the figure of a travel-worn, down-and-out young wanderer.
脚気 (kakke, beriberi) is a vitamin B1 deficiency causing swollen legs and difficulty walking, and can be fatal in severe cases. It spread widely in the Meiji era with the popularity of polished white rice, and its cause long remained unknown, making it the national disease of Meiji society.
About the author
Tōson Shimazaki (25 March 1872 – 22 August 1943), the pen-name of Haruki Shimazaki, was a Japanese writer active in the Meiji, Taishō and early Shōwa periods. He began his career as a Romantic poet but went on to establish himself as a major proponent of Japanese Naturalism, and his most popular work is the historical novel Before the Dawn (1929–1935), about the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate.
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.