Taiyō no nai Machi (太陽のない街, "The Street without Sunlight") is a Japanese novel written by Sunao Tokunaga.
[3] The novel was partly inspired by Tokunaga's experiences being fired from his job at a printing company following his participation in a labour strike in 1926.
[5] In the spring of 1929, Tokunaga presented an early manuscript to Hayashi, an acquaintance who was glad to assist the writing career of a truly working-class author.
[5] Taiyō no nai Machi was well received on initial publication, selling 40,000 copies and turning Tokunaga into the first writer of the proletarian movement whose book was so successful as to allow him to build a house on the proceeds.
[4] While noting that the work has been critically acclaimed,[5] Keene himself dismisses it as "not a good novel"[2] relying on "stock types" of characters being placed in "implausibly melodramatic situations.