What is a plot summary of The Izu dancer?

Answer 1

The nineteen year old narrator, an introspective student on a holiday from an upper class school in Tokyo, is hiking the Izu Peninsula attempting to escape his feelings of loneliness and depression. He meets and becomes infatuated with a young dancer in a traveling family of entertainers. At first he feels a vague erotic attraction to her. But when he sees her in the nude in a public bath, he realizes that she is still a child, still pure and innocent. This changes his feelings for her to a loving brother-like protector. He is accepted by and becomes close to the family. Although they are, as traveling entertainers, considered to be social outcasts, they, in their few days together, are able to help him to accept himself and to respond to others in a warm, open way. At the end the narrator and the little dancer part with the promise that they will meet again. Yet we understand, as the narrator seems to realize, that this will never happen; this sweet tender moment in life has passed, and the love they feel is impossible.