Japaneseshortstory Stories

Dr. Hiroto Ito has a terrifying theory: loneliness is physics, written into the very code of existence. Not psychological. To prove it, he builds a wormhole to the Big Bang. But the chronometric stabilizer is failing, threatening to erase the present. By sheer luck-or is it luck?-he finds a Shingon monk revealing to him the universe's original password, which permits him to travel to the dawn of creation. Ito expects a god. Instead, he finds a suicide note. Now he knows why the cosmos is silent, why we scan the stars and hear nothing. We are not abandoned. We are the reason. And the truth will consume him.

The Spider's Thread is Akutagawa's most well-known short story. It is an exquisite allegory about good, evil and redemption. Kandata, the wicked criminal sent to Hell for his sins, is given a chance to save himself, thanks to the Buddha remembering that he had once spared the life of a little spider. But Kandatas fate is sealed for all eternity when he tries to save himself at the expense of others.