Mariko Okuda's Division is a short story told in Kansai dialect that follows the life of a woman born with ‘monkey hair.’ Through experiences of love and hatred, it asks what life and living mean.

A Kansai-dialect voice carries one woman's life forward with force.

A story in which a high-school boy's strange dreams, the diary in which he carefully records them, and the unsettling behavior of his new stepmother combine to slowly distort everyday life. It traces that unease in a delicate prose style.

Records of dreams and a stepmother's behavior gradually turn a boy's ordinary life into something strange.