指輪一つ
by Kidō Okamoto
A single ring leads to a startling story.
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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 with K recalling an episode that once left him stunned and dazed, set in motion by a single ring. He describes traveling alone to Takayama in Hida and learning of the great earthquake in Tokyo a week after arriving, as the small town fell into unexpected turmoil.
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 the Great Kantō Earthquake, which struck the Tokyo and Yokohama area on 1 September 1923 (the twelfth year of Taishō), killing or injuring over a hundred thousand people and burning down large parts of Tokyo; it was customarily called "the earthquake disaster" (shinsai) at the time. The narrator was in Takayama, far from the disaster zone, and with communications cut off the details were at first unknown, hence the descriptions of the whole town in turmoil and people asking around for news.
Present-day Takayama in Gifu Prefecture, a mountain-basin town set among the Hida Mountains. In the Edo period it was the core town of Hida Province, directly governed by the shogunate, and its old streets are well preserved. Transport was poor in the Taishō era, and to Tokyoites it seemed almost an isolated "fairyland" cut off from the world.
After the earthquake some sections of railway were impassable, so passengers had to get off and walk across the broken sections before changing trains; this was called "foot connection" (toho renraku). In the text it means that such sections still remained in Kanagawa Prefecture, which is also why the narrator switched to the Chūō Line to go around.
About the author
Kidō Okamoto (October 15, 1872 – March 1, 1939) was a Japanese author and playwright whose real name was Keiji Okamoto; he was born in the Shiba Takanawa district of Minato Ward, Tokyo. His best known work is the shin kabuki play Bancho Sarayashiki.
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.