くだもの
From his sickbed, the poet Shiki writes only of how fruit tastes.
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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
This text is a sickbed talk about the taste of fruit: the writer says it is neither botany nor economic produce, but his judgment of flavors as tasted by an invalid, asking readers to blame any error on his roughened patient's tongue. He then discusses the meaning and range of the word "fruit," which items belong and which do not, and how climate shapes fruit varieties and flavors, reading plainly and loosely, like idle talk from a sickbed.
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.
This alludes to a passage in the Yanzi Chunqiu: "The orange tree grown south of the Huai River bears oranges; grown north of it, it bears trifoliate oranges." It originally means that the environment changes the nature of things. The trifoliate orange (枳殻) is the fruit of the zhi tree; it is bitter and inedible. Shiki here takes the phrase literally, discussing the effect of climate on fruit trees.
About the author
Masaoka Shiki (October 14, 1867 – September 19, 1902), pen name of Masaoka Noboru, was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic of the Meiji period. He is regarded as a major figure in modern haiku, credited with nearly 20,000 stanzas, wrote on tanka reform, and is often counted among the four great haiku masters alongside Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.
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.
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