がっき
楽器
せいめい
生命
だいいちぶ
第一部
The Life of a Musical Instrument Part I by
おがわみめい
小川未明 (translation: J. D. Wisgo)

This little gem of a story in three parts about a magical organ is by
おがわ
小川
みめい
未明
, known in Japan as the founder of modern children's literature. Although he also wrote several novels, Ogawa was a prolific author of children's stories (
どうわ
童話
), publishing about 1200 during the period from 1926 through to his death in 1961.
Ogawa's stories are excellent learning material for modern readers, as his use of language is varied but not overly complex, and he rarely uses constructions not used in modern Japanese. Additionally, while billed as 'children's stories', the themes often deal with the passage of time and life, and provide appeal and interest for adult readers. Some of Ogawa's sentences do tend to be a little long, but they are logically constructed, and provide great practice for learning Japanese sentence structure!
We are greatly indebted to J. D. Wisgo for allowing us to use his excellent translation of this piece. For more information, read J.D's blog post, or for more material, find more bilingual texts translated by J.D. on Amazon.
This is part 1 of a three part series. When you have read this, continue with:
The source of this piece is:
Japanese: Aozora, English translation: J. D. Wisgo by permission (more information)
This text has been selected to suit reading level: Intermediate.
However, it includes some vocabulary and phrases that you would not necessarily be expected to know at that level. We believe knowledge of such vocabulary and phrases is beneficial at any stage of Japanese language learning, as they are commonly used in everyday language.
Many of the readings in the Reading Corner, such as this one, have additional notes in the introduction. The notes often provide extra information that will help you get more out of the text, including links to articles in the Grammar library. Additional notes are included with some of the individual sentences in a reading directly below the text.
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