The Letter in the Cement Barrel
セメント樽の中の手紙
Semento-daru no Naka no Tegami
Author: Hayama Yoshiki
#Japanese Classic#Showa#Proletarian#Social Realism#Working Class
- Original language
- Japanese
About
A cement worker named Yoso finds a letter tucked inside a barrel at his factory. It is from a young woman at another plant: her lover was caught in the pulverizer, ground into the very cement now sealed in the barrel, and she begs the finder to tell her where it will be used. Set against Yoso's own exhausted homecoming to a wife and too many children, the story braids one woman's grief with the grinding cycle of poverty no laborer can escape. A landmark of Japanese proletarian literature, Hayama Yoshiki's short story remains a fixture of school anthologies and a piercing indictment of industrial life.
About the author
H
Hayama Yoshiki
1894 – 1945 · Japan
Leading proletarian writer whose works "The Letter in the Cement Barrel" and "People Living on the Sea" drew on his own labor experience.
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Available rights
| Territory | Language | Format | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| WW | en | translation | available |