Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Early life

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was born in Irifune, Kyōbashi, Tokyo City (present-day Akashi, Chūō, Tokyo), the eldest son of businessman Toshizō Niihara and his wife Fuku. His family owned a milk production business. His mother experienced mental illness shortly after his birth, so he was adopted and raised by his maternal uncle, Michiaki Akutagawa, from whom he received the Akutagawa family name. The Akutagawa lineage was part of the warrior class and served the Tokugawa clan as okubōzu, who managed the tearoom and served tea. Ryūnosuke's adoptive family enjoyed art. He was interested in classical Chinese literature from an early age, as well as in the works of Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki.

He entered the First Higher School without taking entrance exams thanks to his middle school academic record in 1910 and developed relationships with classmates such as Kan Kikuchi, Masao Kume, Yūzō Yamamoto, and Tsuchiya Bunmei, all of whom would later become authors. He began writing after entering Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) in 1913, where he studied English literature. While still a student, he proposed marriage to a childhood friend, Yayoi Yoshida, but his adoptive family did not approve the union. In 1916 he became engaged to Fumi Tsukamoto, whom he married in 1918. They had three children: Hiroshi Akutagawa (1920–1981) was an actor, Takashi Akutagawa (1922–1945) was killed as a student draftee in Burma, and Yasushi Akutagawa (1925–1989) was a composer.

Following graduation, Akutagawa taught briefly at the Naval Engineering School in Yokosuka, Kanagawa as an English language instructor, before deciding to devote his efforts to writing fulltime.

Literary career

In 1914, Akutagawa and his former high school friends revived the literary journal Shinshichō ("New Currents of Thought"), where they published translations of William Butler Yeats and Anatole France along with works they had written themselves. Akutagawa published his second short story Rashōmon the following year in the literary magazine Teikoku Bungaku ("Imperial Literature"), while still a student. The story, based on a twelfth-century tale, was not well received by Akutagawa's friends, who greatly criticized it. Nonetheless, Akutagawa gathered up the courage to visit his idol, Natsume Sōseki, in December 1915 for Sōseki's weekly literary circles. In November, he published the work in the literary magazine Teikoku Mongaku. In early 1916 he published Hana ("The Nose", 1916), which received a letter of praise from Sōseki and secured Akutagawa his first taste of fame.

It was also at this time that Akutagawa started writing haiku under the haigo (pen name) Gaki (我鬼). Akutagawa followed with a series of short stories set in Heian period, Edo period or early Meiji period Japan. These stories reinterpreted classical works and historical incidents often revolving around the Konjaku Monogatarishū. Examples of these stories include: Gesaku zanmai ("Absorbed in Letters", 1917) and Kareno-shō ("Gleanings from a Withered Field", 1918), Jigokuhen ("Hell Screen", 1918); Hōkyōnin no Shi ("The Death of a Disciple", 1918), and Butōkai ("The Ball", 1920). Akutagawa was a strong opponent of naturalism. He published Mikan ("Mandarin Oranges", 1919) and Aki ("Autumn", 1920) which have more modern settings.

In 1921, Akutagawa interrupted his writing career to spend four months in China, as a reporter for the Osaka Mainichi Shinbun. The trip was stressful and he suffered from various illnesses, from which his health would never recover. Shortly after his return he published Yabu no naka ("In a Grove", 1922). During the trip, Akutagawa visited numerous cities of central and southeastern China including Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou. Before his trip, he wrote a short story entitled Nankin no Kirisuto ("The Christ of Nanjing"). It presents the Chinese Christian community according to his own imaginative vision of Nanjing, as influenced by classical Chinese literature.

Influences

Akutagawa's stories were influenced by his belief that the practice of literature should be universal and could bring together Western and Japanese cultures. The idea can be seen in the way that Akutagawa used existing works from a variety of cultures and time periods and either rewrites the story with modern sensibilities or creates new stories using ideas from multiple sources. Culture and the formation of a cultural identity is also a major theme in several of his works. In these stories, he explores the formation of cultural identity during periods in history where Japan was most open to outside influences. An example of this is his story Hōkyōnin no Shi ("The Death of a Disciple", 1918) which is set in the early missionary period.

The portrayal of women in Akutagawa's stories was mainly shaped by the influence of three women who acted as his mother figures. Most significant was his biological mother Fuku, from whom he worried about inheriting her madness. Although Akutagawa was removed from Fuku eight months after his birth, he identified strongly with her and believed that, if at any moment he might go mad, life was meaningless. His aunt Fuki played the most prominent role in his upbringing, controlling much of Akutagawa's life as well as demanding much of his attention, especially as she grew older. The women who appear in Akutagawa's stories, much like his mother figures, were for the most part written as dominating, aggressive, deceitful, and selfish. Conversely, men were often represented as the victims of such women.

Akutagawa found a lot of influence from China throughout his life as well. His favorite novels from when he was younger were Chinese epics like Journey to the West (西游记), and Water Margin (水浒传) which he later goes to see at various theaters during his trip, writing extensively about them in his travelogue. Akutagwa's narrative style being fragmentary and anecdotal displays in some part how he was influenced by the Chinese classics. His trip to China in 1921 influenced his works and worldview in ways which can be seen predominately in the growing disillusionment present in his later works. The way that his writing interacts with modernity and the classics shows that his writing influences spanned further than just Japan.

Later life

The final phase of Akutagawa's literary career was marked by deteriorating physical and mental health. Much of his work during this period is distinctly autobiographical, some with text taken directly from his diaries. His works during this period include Daidōji Shinsuke no hansei ("The Early Life of Daidōji Shinsuke", 1925) and Tenkibo ("Death Register", 1926).

At this time, Akutagawa had a highly publicized dispute with Jun'ichirō Tanizaki over the importance of structure versus lyricism in stories. Akutagawa argued that structure (how the story was told) was more important than the content or plot of the story, whereas Tanizaki argued the opposite.

Akutagawa's final works include Kappa (1927), a satire based on the eponymous creature from Japanese folklore, Haguruma ("Spinning Gears" or "Cogwheels", 1927), Aru ahō no isshō ("A Fool's Life" or "The Life of a Stupid Man"), and Bungeiteki na, amari ni bungeiteki na ("Literary, All Too Literary", 1927).

Towards the end of his life, Akutagawa suffered from visual hallucinations and anxiety over the fear that he had inherited his mother's mental disorder. In 1927, he survived a suicide attempt, together with a friend of his wife. He later died of suicide after taking an overdose of Veronal, which had been given to him by Mokichi Saitō on 24 July of the same year. In his suicide note titled A Note to a Certain Old Friend (或旧友へ送る手記, Aru Kyūyū e Okuru Shuki) (addressed to his friend Masao Kume) he wrote that he felt a "vague sense of unease" (ぼんやりした不安, bon'yari shita fuan) about the future. He was 35 years old.

Legacy

During the course of his short life, Akutagawa wrote 150 short stories. A number of these have been adapted into other media. Akira Kurosawa's famous 1950 film Rashōmon retells Akutagawa's "In a Grove", with the title and the frame scenes set in the Rashomon Gate taken from Akutagawa's "Rashōmon". Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva wrote the ballet Gagaku (1994), based on Akutagawa's "Hell Screen". Japanese composer Mayako Kubo wrote an opera entitled Rashomon, based on Akutagawa's story. The German version premiered in Graz, Austria in 1996, and the Japanese version in Tokyo in 2002. The central conceit of the story (i.e. conflicting accounts of the same events from different points of view, with none "definitive") has entered into storytelling as an accepted trope.

In 1930, Tatsuo Hori, a writer, who saw himself as a disciple of Akutagawa, published his short story "Sei kazoku" (literally "The Holy Family"), which was written under the impression of Akutagawa's death and even made reference to the dead mentor in the shape of the deceased character Kuki. In 1935, Akutagawa's lifelong friend Kan Kikuchi established the literary award for promising new writers, the Akutagawa Prize, in his honor.

Akutagawa is featured as a character in the anime franchise Bungo Stray Dogs.

In 2020 NHK produced and aired the film A Stranger in Shanghai. It depicts Akutagawa's time as a reporter in the city and stars Ryuhei Matsuda.

Reception

Akutagawa's works have had many different interpretations and stances based on both the time period in his own life as well as various periods after his death. While not a monolith, the most prevalent viewpoints and trends are as follows.

The initial reactions to Akutagawa's works in the 20's and 30's as they were being released come from the Marxist critics and thinkers and were primarily negative in nature. He was generally thought to be a bourgeois writer who wrote in an overly convoluted way just for the sake of it. Rather than having a firm message, it was understood that he was in pursuit of aesthetics rather than social reality or class struggles. Given the time of the Marxist movement in Japan and his suicide in 1927, this too was included in his reception. People took his suicide as a sign of psychological instability and the end of an era. Akutagawa was seen as a symbol of both literary and psychological decline in modern Japan.

After World War II, Japan sought to distance his work from politics. In doing so, his critiques became much more favorable heralding him as a master craftsman. He was re-evaluated based on his writing style, literary technique, and psychological content rather than any political or social standpoints. Through this he was established as a leading figure in modern Japanese literature.

In the 1970s a new movement focused on reassessing literature through the lens of formalism and philosophy, most siginificantly in Akutagawa's case, on Epistemology. His work was then analyzed largely for things like ambiguity and consciousness. He began to be recognized as a philosophical thinker moreso than a political thinker or writer. In looking at the content of his works, commonalities emerged pertaining to the narrative ambiguity and fragmentary nature of his writing style. Though some of these aspects did come about from his influences the underlying sentiment was that he reworked these things into his own brand of epistemological philosophy.

More recent thought tends to look towards revisiting political critique and reinterpreting it. Marxist critique in particular is revisited factoring out Akutagawa's mental health since it was used in a negative light back then. Rather than dismissing his problems, they're looked at in a more neutral capacity. There was an ideological conflict going on at the time and instead of taking just the leading thought, both sides are explored. His suicide was not longer viewed as a weakness or him succumbing to his bourgeois ways, but as a product of fragmentation and epistemological crisis. Other thoughts endeavor to say that he was actually more left leaning, not apolitical, as they claim that his later works make it a point to criticize capitalism and industrial society using not realism, but allegory as a social critic.

Works in English translation

Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan, Vol. 2. Trans. Eric S. Bell & Eiji Ukai. Tokyo: Kaitakusha, 1930(?).

The Spider's Web.--The Autumn.--The Nose.

Tales Grotesque and Curious. Trans. Glenn W. Shaw. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1930.

Tobacco and the devil.--The nose.--The handkerchief.--Rashōmon.--Lice.--The spider's thread.--The wine worm.--The badger.--The ball.--The pipe.--Mōri Sensei.

Hell Screen and Other Stories. Trans. W.H.H. Norman. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1948.

Jigokuhen.--Jashūmon.--The General.--Mensura Zoilii.

Kappa. Trans. Seiichi Shiojiri. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1951.

The Three Treasures. Trans. Sasaki Takamasa. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1951.

The Real Tripitaka and Other Pieces. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1952.

"San Sebastian" translated by Arthur Waley.

Rashomon and Other Stories. Trans. Takashi Kojima. Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1952.

In a Grove.--Rashomon.--Yam Gruel.--The Martyr.--Kesa and Morito.--The Dragon.

Not to be confused with a book of the same title that contains translations by Shaw, published by Hara Shobo in 1964 and reprinted in 1976.