Japan has a venerable tradition of quirky and inventive means of escape from the oppression of summer, as well as from rigid social constraints and conventions. Some of them take distinctly weird forms. In Edogawa Ranpo's classic story, "The Stalker in the Attic" (1925), for example, the eccentric protagonist — as if a mosquito of tedium is buzzing inside his head — escapes from the boredom and constriction of his daily routine not by fleeing into wide, open spaces but by climbing into an even more constricted space, the closet of his apartment, and choosing to sleep there.