Hunting Gun

by Yasushi Inoue

Published 1 February 1977
The Hunting Gun, set in the period immediately following WWII, follows the consequences of a tragic love affair among well-to-do people in an exclusive suburb of the great commercial cities of Osaka and Kobe. Told from the viewpoints of three different women, this is a story of the psychological impact of illicit love. First viewed through the eyes of Shoko, who learns of the affair through reading her mother's diary, then through the eyes of Midori, who had long known about the affair of her husband with Saiko, and finally through the eyes of Saiko herself.

These three short stories, The Counterfeiter, Obasute, and The Full Moon, explore the roles of loneliness, compassion, beauty, and forgiveness in day-to-day life in Japan, all within the context of the Buddhist-influenced notion of inescapable predestination.