Author · 1901–1932
梶井基次郎Kajii Motojirō · かじい もとじろう
Kajii Motojirō was born in Ōsaka and studied at the Third Higher School in Kyōto before entering Tokyo Imperial University to study English literature, which he did not complete. With friends he helped found the coterie magazine Aozora (Blue Sky), where "Lemon" first appeared. His precise, sensuous style later won him a lasting place in modern Japanese literature.
Stories by Kajii Motojirō
Ｋの昇天 — K on the Moonlit Shore
Ｋの昇天 is a short story by Kajii Motojirō, best known for 檸檬 (Lemon). It is written as a letter. The narrator replies to someone grieving the drowning of a young man called K, and offers his own strange explanation of the death. He met K…
檸檬 — One Lemon
Kajii Motojirō's "Lemon" is a short, first-person prose sketch with almost no plot. A young man is weighed down by a vague, ominous dread and wanders the streets of Kyōto. He cannot bear music or poetry, cannot afford the small pretty…
桜の樹の下には — At the Roots of the Cherry Trees
This is a very short prose piece, closer to a prose poem than a story. A man speaks to someone he calls おまえ, who never answers, and makes a startling claim about the cherry trees in bloom. The famous opening line, 桜の樹の下には屍体が埋まっている！, is…