Tsuyu no atosaki [During the Rain] by Nagai Kafū

Nagai Kafū’s Tsuyu no atosaki [During the Rain] (1931) is a novel that portrays the life of a licentious café waitress, Kimie, whose frequent physical mobility implicitly illustrates a cartographical purview of Tokyo. Set some time after the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, the third-person narrative navigates the reader through snapshot views of urban pleasure districts, residential areas, and the suburbs away from the bustling city center. Such locational divisions not only suggest the characters’ restless traits as urban hoppers but also imply their psychic conditions resonant with the images of each locality. The plethora of locations in the novel designated by proper nouns might deter the reader who is unfamiliar with the particular areas; on the other hand, the specificity in the descriptions of particular neighborhoods stands upon an intersubjective sense of locations that could be shared among the urban readership.

One of the most notable topoi that frequently appears in Tsuyu...