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firefly hunt

The passage from 'The Firefly Hunt' by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki describes Sachiko's experience during a firefly hunt, highlighting her exhaustion and the contrast between her romanticized expectations and the reality of the event. As she and the children approach the river, they find fireflies gliding over the water, creating a magical atmosphere that evokes a sense of nostalgia and wonder. The moment is portrayed as a dreamy, childlike experience, emphasizing the beauty of nature and the fleeting nature of such memories.

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29 views

firefly hunt

The passage from 'The Firefly Hunt' by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki describes Sachiko's experience during a firefly hunt, highlighting her exhaustion and the contrast between her romanticized expectations and the reality of the event. As she and the children approach the river, they find fireflies gliding over the water, creating a magical atmosphere that evokes a sense of nostalgia and wonder. The moment is portrayed as a dreamy, childlike experience, emphasizing the beauty of nature and the fleeting nature of such memories.

Uploaded by

Skylar Peia
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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English Language Arts

Read the passage from “The Firefly Hunt,” a short story by Japanese
Unit 1

writer Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1886–1965). Then answer questions 4


through 6.

from “The Firefly Hunt”


by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

1 It was a strange house, of course, but it was probably less the house than
sheer exhaustion that kept Sachiko awake. She had risen early, she had been
rocked and jolted by train and automobile through the heat of the day, and in
the evening she had chased over the fields with the children, two or three miles
it must have been. . . . She knew, though, that the firefly hunt would be
pleasant to remember. . . . She had seen firefly hunts only on the puppet
stage, Miyuki and Komazawa murmuring of love as they sailed down the River
Uji; and indeed one should properly put on a long-sleeved kimono, a smart
summer print, and run across the evening fields with the wind at one’s sleeves,
lightly taking up a firefly here and there from under one’s fan. Sachiko was
entranced with the picture. But a firefly hunt was, in fact, a good deal different.
If you are going to play in the fields you had better change your clothes, they
were told, and four muslin kimonos—prepared especially for them?—were laid
out, each with a different pattern, as became their several ages. Not quite the
way it looked in the pictures, laughed one of the sisters. It was almost dark,
however, and it hardly mattered what they had on. They could still see each
other’s faces when they left the house, but by the time they reached the river
it was only short of pitch dark. . . . A river it was called; actually it was no
more than a ditch through the paddies, a little wider perhaps than most
ditches, with plumes of grass bending over it from either bank and almost
closing off the surface. A bridge was still dimly visible a hundred yards or so
ahead. . . .
2 They turned off their flashlights and approached in silence; fireflies dislike noise
and light. But even at the edge of the river there were no fireflies. Perhaps they
aren’t out tonight, someone whispered. No, there are plenty of them—come
over here. Down into the grasses on the bank, and there, in that delicate
moment before the last light goes, were fireflies, gliding out over the water in
low arcs like the sweep of the grasses . . . And on down the river, and on and
on, were fireflies, lines of them wavering out from this bank and the other and
back again . . . sketching their uncertain lines of light down close to the surface
of the water, hidden from outside by the grasses. . . . In that last moment of
light, with the darkness creeping up from the water and the moving plumes of

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English Language Arts

grass still faintly outlined, there, far, far, far as the river stretched, an infinite

Unit 1
number of little lines in two long lines on either side, quiet, unearthly. Sachiko
could see it all even now, here inside with her eyes closed. . . . Surely it was
the impressive moment of the evening, the moment that made the firefly hunt
worth while. . . . A firefly hunt has indeed none of the radiance of a cherry
blossom party. Dark, dreamy, rather . . . might one say? Perhaps something of
the child’s world, the world of the fairy story in it. . . . Something not to be
painted but to be set to music, the mood of it taken up on a piano or a
koto. . . . And while she lay with her eyes closed, the fireflies, out there along
the river, all through the night, were flashing on and off, silent, numberless.
Sachiko felt a wild, romantic surge, as though she were joining them there,
soaring and dipping along the surface of the water, cutting her own uncertain
line of light. . . .
“The Firefly Hunt” by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki from Modern Japanese Literature , edited by Donald Keene, copyright © 1956 by
Grove Press Inc. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is
prohibited.

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