山月記
By 中島敦
Cover: Tiger Walking on a Windy Day (1842), woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798–1861) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (artist died 1861)
Li Zheng, a gifted Tang official who gave up his post to become a poet, has been turned into a tiger, and an old friend meets him by night on a mountain road. Nakajima Atsushi's story of 1942, adapted from a Chinese tale, makes the tiger's confession of pride and fear a classic of modern Japanese writing.
Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.