Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
1892–1927
Biography
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (芥川龍之介) was a Japanese writer of short fiction, born in Tokyo in 1892 and active through the Taishō period. He is often called the father of the modern Japanese short story, and the Akutagawa Prize, one of Japan's most prominent literary awards, bears his name. He was a learned and exacting writer who drew on old Japanese and Chinese sources and wrote with a cool intelligence about art, morality and the divided self. He died by suicide in 1927, at the age of thirty-five.
His best-known stories include Rashomon (羅生門), published in 1915 and drawn from a medieval collection of tales; The Nose; The Spider's Thread; and Hell Screen. Late in life he wrote Kappa (河童), a satire narrated by a patient in an asylum who describes a land of water-sprites whose society mirrors and mocks Japan's own. Kappa was written in the last months of his life and published in 1927.
Two of his books are on this site under their Japanese titles. Rashomon (羅生門) follows a servant who has lost his place and shelters under a ruined city gate in Kyoto, wondering whether he must turn thief to live. Kappa (河童) is his satire of the land of the kappa, whose art, law and views of life hold up an unsparing mirror to human society. Both show the precise style and quiet irony that made Akutagawa admired by his contemporaries and by later readers.
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Books
河童
by 芥川龍之介
A patient in an asylum tells how he fell into the land of the kappa, water-sprites whose country mirrors Japan's, with its own art, law and views of birth and death. Akutagawa's satire of 1927, written in the last months of his life, sees human society through the eyes of its…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.羅生門
by 芥川龍之介
In a Kyoto ruined by earthquake, fire and famine, a servant who has lost his place shelters from the rain under the decaying Rashomon gate and wonders whether he must turn thief to live. Akutagawa's short story of 1915, drawn from a medieval collection of tales, turns on what he…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.