Boxcar of Chrysanthemums (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Fumi Ueda
- First Published: 1967
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: The 1960's
- Setting: Karuizawa and vicinity
- Principal Characters: I, Ichige Masutoshi, Ichige Rie, Kurokawa, Kashimura
- Genres: Short fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: Marriage, Mental illness, Women’s issues, Psychiatry or psychiatrists
- Locales: Japan
The Story
A middle-aged woman, much like the author, the narrator has left her summer home at Karuizawa to go to a nearby town to give a talk to a woman's group. She returns to Karuizawa on a train that is unexpectedly slow, not only stopping at every single station along the way but also making remarkably long stops.
At one stop the narrator finally gets off the train, partly to relieve her irritation and frustration and partly to learn the cause of the delays. She finds the station attendants loading long bundles into freight cars. At the same time, she encounters a...
[The entire page is 1176 words long]
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