The Grave of the Wild Chrysanthemum — Summary and Characters
Masao and Tamiko, a first love lost
- Author
- Itō Sachio
- Published
- January 1906
- First appeared in
- Hototogisu
- Form
- Novel
- Genres
- Romance
- Coming of Age
- Setting
- Chiba
- Length
- 33,541 characters
- Reading time
- About 1 hr 7 min
- Orthography
- Modern script and kana
About this work
The tanka poet Itō Sachio's first novel and his best-known work, published in the magazine Hototogisu in 1906. Natsume Sōseki praised it warmly as natural, plain, pitiful, beautiful and full of country feeling. In an old house at Yagiri in Chiba, fifteen-year-old Masao and his cousin Tamiko, two years older, fall into a pure first love. Drawn to each other, they are pulled apart by what the world says about an older girl and by the calculations of the adults, and Tamiko dies after a marriage she did not want. The close, in which Masao lays wild chrysanthemums on her grave, moves the reader with a clear, cold sorrow. A classic of the Japanese lyrical love story.
Summary
"When the season of the later moon comes round, I cannot help thinking of it" — Masao, the narrator, now grown old, looks back on an unforgettable first love of more than ten years ago. The setting is the old Saitō house, on a low hill across the Yagiri ferry from Matsudo. His mother has been ill a long while, and Tamiko, his cousin from Ichikawa, has come to help nurse her and keep the house. Masao is fifteen and just out of primary school; Tamiko is seventeen. The two are the best of friends, and before they know it a faint love has grown between them. But because Tamiko is the elder, the people of the house and the sharp tongues of the village set about pulling them apart. Masao is sent away from home to middle school for his studies, and while he is gone Tamiko is made to accept, against her heart, a match her parents have arranged. And then — married, keeping her love for Masao hidden, Tamiko dies. When Masao learns that she died with his photograph and his letters held to her breast, he goes to her grave every day for seven days and plants it all over with wild chrysanthemums. "Tamiko made a marriage she could not refuse and died at last; I made a marriage I could not refuse and live on.... Far apart as the living and the dead may be, my heart does not leave Tamiko for a single day." It is an enduring masterpiece, which draws the too-painful end of a young and blameless love with the delicacy of a wildflower.
Characters
- Masao A boy of the Saitō house. Fifteen years old
- Tamiko Masao's cousin, two years his senior, with whom he shares a pure love
- Masao's mother Who is uneasy about the two of them
Chapter-by-chapter synopsis
The app covers this work chapter by chapter (full text in the app).
- 1. About This Work
- 2. Main Characters
- 3. Main Secondary Characters
- 4. The House at Yagiri — A Single Hedge
- 5. Sunset over the Eggplant Field — The Egg of Love
- 6. The Hillside Field on the Night of the Thirteenth Moon — Wild Chrysanthemum and Gentian
- 7. The Yagiri Ferry — A Parting Forever
- 8. The Marriage — O-Masu's Account of the Time He Was Away
- 9. June 22 — "Come Home at Once"
- 10. Before the Grave — Wild Chrysanthemums All Around
- 11. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing
The opening (original text)
When the season of the later moon comes round, I cannot help thinking of it. It was a childish affair, I suppose, but I am quite unable to forget it. More than ten years have gone by, and I no longer remember many of the smaller facts; but the feeling of it is as fresh today as if it were yesterday, and when I think of that time I go back entirely to the heart I had then, and the tears well up without stopping.
The Grave of the Wild Chrysanthemum by Itō Sachio (Aozora Bunko)
The ending (original text)
Tamiko made a marriage she could not refuse and died at last; I made a marriage I could not refuse and live on. Tamiko must have kept my photograph and my letters at her breast and never let them go. Far apart as the living and the dead may be, my heart does not leave Tamiko for a single day.
The Grave of the Wild Chrysanthemum by Itō Sachio (Aozora Bunko)
Famous passages
“So Tamiko really loves wild chrysanthemums that much... no wonder, somehow, Tamiko is just like a wild chrysanthemum herself.”
A line Masao speaks to Tamiko while picking flowers in a field. This comparison of a faint first love to a wild flower became synonymous with the work itself, and “a person like a wild chrysanthemum” has since become a widely used figure for a pure-hearted girl.
Read the original
The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.
Related works
- Sanshirō September 1908
- Child's Play January 1895
- Botchan April 1906
- Onna keizu January 1907
- The Quilt September 1907
- Gubijinsō June 1907