Tag
Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s “Tag” is a brief, delicate story about memory, time, and the mysterious force of a single expression. Moving from a childhood game in a town backstreet to a chance reunion on a train decades later, the piece traces how one moment can remain latent in the heart and suddenly return with unsettling clarity. Akutagawa compresses an entire emotional history into a few scenes, suggesting love, loss, political struggle, imprisonment, and marriage without explaining them outright. The result is subtle but powerful: a portrait of recognition that feels both ordinary and fated. The story’s quiet emotional center lies in the heroine’s “strangely serious” face, which becomes a lasting emblem of intimacy, memory, and the irretrievable passage of youth.
In a back street of a certain town, he was playing tag with a younger girl. It was still light out, yet it was just the hour when the gas lamps at the street corners were being lit.
"Come and catch me."
He turned back toward the girl, who was now "it," while he fled along with perfect ease. Keeping her eyes fixed on him, she chased after him with all her might. When he looked at her face, he thought, for some reason, what a strangely serious face she had.
That face remained in his heart for quite a long time. But as the years passed, it eventually faded away completely.
Then, about twenty years later, he happened to meet her again on a train in a snowy country. It was the time of evening when, as the world beyond the window darkened, the dampness of shoes and overcoats suddenly began to seep into the body.
"It has been a long time."
With a cigarette between his lips, he casually turned his eyes toward her face. (It was the third day since he had left prison together with his comrades.) She, having recently lost her husband, was earnestly talking about her parents and her brothers. When he looked at her face, he thought, for some reason, what a strangely serious face she had. And at the same time, before he knew it, he had become once more a boy of twelve.
They are married now and have a home in a certain suburb. But since that time, he has not once again seen before his eyes that strangely serious expression on her face.
(December 1, Taisho 15 [1926])