Rashomon

Over the course of his 35 years, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa became a leading intellectual and literary artist in Japan. A writer of the Taisho Period, which lasted from 1912 to 1926, he is considered the first Japanese author to become well known in the West. He was born on March 1, 1892, in Tokyo, Japan and died by suicide on July 24, 1927.

As a young child, he was adopted by his uncle when his mother became unable to care for him due to mental illness. He did very well in school despite anxiety and poor health. His family immersed him in classical art and literature, such that Akutagawa was surrounded by tradition in a modern world, growing up on kabuki and calligraphy while Japan rapidly westernized around him. He studied English and Chinese, and he would go on to study English literature at the University of Tokyo from 1913 to 1916. Akutagawa was still a student when he first published “Rashōmon,” which did not receive acclaim, or even notice, until many years later.

His enthusiasm for reading translated into his adulthood. As a young child, he was fascinated by classical Chinese literature and Western short stories, and he believed that literature was a way to marry different cultures. He translated foreign works of literature and even worked overseas as a reporter. As a writer, Akutagawa became known for his historical storytelling narratives, incorporating modern (for his time) sensibilities into tales from the 12th and 13th centuries. Akutagawa based “Rashōmon” on the tales from the Konjaku Monogatarishu, a collection of over one thousand tales written during the late Heian Period (794-1185). Many of the stories in the Konjaku Monogatarishu came from China and India, as well as Japan. Akutagawa’s earliest stories are explorations and retellings of these classic folk tales with unique, modern spins; his later work became more experimental. Some of his notable literary styles, such as his particular use of Chinese characters, cannot be conveyed via English translations.

In 1915, Akutagawa won the notice of literary giant Natsume Sōseki, who praised him for his short story “The Nose” and helped gain him attention in the literary world. Today, Akutagawa’s stories are part of the Japanese school curriculum, and he is greatly admired by authors like Haruki Murakami, who wrote the Introduction in Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories. However, Akutagawa’s writing was not without its critics; according to Murakami, Akutagawa was judged for an overreliance on retellings of pre-existing stories—and for maintaining too distant a view on life. Akutagawa was said to “toy” with life like a scientist using “silver tweezers,” as opposed to authors like Sōseki, who was praised for, among other things, his close examination of the human heart. As the literary trends shifted, the “I-novel” (watakushi-shosetsu) gained popularity, and some of Akutagawa’s late works utilized this style and turned introspective and confessional. In the Introduction, Murakami comments that this was unavoidable for Akutagawa, as it was a solution to the problem of authorial distance; other critics have attributed the shift to Akutagawa’s sense of an individual’s moral culpability within a necessarily amoral societal structure, i.e., that only people, not cultures, make decisions with ethical implications (“Fear of the Self: Japanese Literature’s Tragic Hero.” The London Magazine).

Despite Akutagawa’s genius intellectual and literary abilities, he had several mental health conditions that impacted his life, such as depression and hallucinations. Additionally, his physical health rapidly declined over the years, particularly after falling ill while working in China in 1921. At 35 years old, he died by suicide, overdosing on a sleep medication that was popular at the time. Akutagawa would leave behind a total of 150 short stories.