花園の思想
At a seaside sanatorium, a husband keeps watch over his dying wife.
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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 passage follows a husband at a sanatorium on a hill by the sea, tending to his dying wife amid sunlight, rose beds, and the farewells of nurses. The tone is quiet and oppressive, letting bright imagery stand against the silent gazes of two people watching death draw near.
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 tuberculosis sanatorium. From the Taishō era to the early Shōwa era, tuberculosis raged in Japan with no effective medicine; patients were sent to sanatoriums on hillsides in the suburbs for long-term rest cures, their illness drawn out through climate, nutrition, and rest therapy. The sunbathing, liquid feeding, and repeated deathbed pronouncements in this text all reflect the daily life of sanatoriums at that time.
Sunbathing therapy was one of the treatments for tuberculosis at the time: patients, dressed in thin hospital gowns, lay for long hours on the outdoor lawn in the sun, which was believed to help strengthen the body. Thus the sight of patients lying 'in heaps' on the lawn was a typical scene at a sanatorium, not a moment of leisure.
「疋（匹）」 is a Japanese counter for birds, beasts, insects, and fish, and is not normally used for people. The author applies this counter to his dying wife, echoing the later line 「もう夫婦でもなければ人間でもなかった」 ('we were no longer husband and wife, nor even human').
About the author
Riichi Yokomitsu (17 March 1898 – 30 December 1947) was an experimental, modernist Japanese writer. After his 1923 stories "Nichirin" ("The Sun") and "Hae" ("A Fly") appeared in Bungeishunjū, he co-founded the magazine Bungei-Jidai with Yasunari Kawabata and became known as a leading figure of the Shinkankakuha (New Sensation School).
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.
Can I use another gloss language?
English and Chinese glosses are prepared in advance; signed-in readers can generate other languages.