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Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (芥川 龍之介, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke); (March 1, 1892 - July 24, 1927) was a Japanese author, poet, and essayist. Akutagawa never published a novel, instead focusing on the some 150 short stories for which he is most well-known. He was one of the first Japanese writers to gain popularity in the west.

Life and career

Early life

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was born Niihara Ryūnosuke in the Kyōbashi district of Tokyo on March 1, 1892 at 8 AM. His name Ryūnosuke, literally "Dragon Son", was given him because he was born in the Year of the Dragon, in the Month of the Dragon, on the Day of the Dragon, at the Hour of the Dragon. He took his family name from his mother, Niihara Fuku, who came from a samurai clan. Shortly following his birth, Akutagawa's mother developed a mental illness, and his father Binzo Shinhara, a dairy salesman, locked her in the attic. When Toshizo proved unable to care for his son, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was adopted by his uncle Michiaki Akutagawa at nine months old. Akutagawa spent the rest of his childhood with his aunt and uncle in downtown Edo, and took on their surname.

Akutagawa grew up without friends, always worried over his perceived parental abandonment. He instead delved into literature, and by the end of his adolescence, he had produced translations of Anatole France and Heinrich Ibsen. Akutagawa entered high school in 1910. In 1913, Akutagawa enrolled in Tokyo Imperial University, graduating in 1916 with a degree in English literature.

After graduating, Akutagawa began teaching English at the Naval Engineering College in Yokosuka, Kanagawa. While there, he married Tsukamoto Fumi; three sons came out of the marriage. Wanting to focus on writing, Akutagawa left his post and refused offers to teach in universities at both Tokyo and Kyoto to become a full-time contributor for the Osaka Mainichi newspaper. Akutagawa spent much of 1921 in China as a corespondent, but was forced to return to Japan due to health concerns.

Literary career

Akutagawa first began writing short fiction while at Tokyo Imperial University. His first work was a translation of Anatole France's 1909 novel Balthazar into Japanese. With Kikuchi Kan and Kumé Masao, Akutagawa founded the literary magazine Shinshichō, where the three published translations of western stories, including Akutagawa's translations of Anatole France and John Keats, as well as their own works. Akutagawa's first published work, the short story Rashōmon, appeared in the magazine Teikoku bungaku in 1915. Popular novelist Natsume Sōseki, upon seeing the story The Nose in Shinshichō, wrote to Akutagawa to encourage him to continue writing, becoming his mentor.

Akutagawa wrote the majority of his works in the ten years preceding his death. His short story [[The Nose (short story)}The Nose]] was Akutagawa's first popular success. Many of Akutagawa's most famous works, including Hell Screen, In a Grove, and Kappa, were available to the public until over a half-century after his death.

Death

On July 24, 1927, at the age of thirty-five, Akutagawa committed suicide by overdosing on veronal. For the two years, Akutagawa had become delusional, experiencing frequent hallucinations, feelings of alienation, and believing maggots infested his food. He felt himself a failure as a writer, and his works insignificant. Fearing he was developing the same condition his mother had been afflicted with, and struggling with his uncle's debts, Akutagawa decided to kill himself. His suicide note, entitled A Note to a Certain Old Friend read "The world I am now in is one of diseased nerves, lucid as ice. Such voluntary death must give us peace, if not happiness. Now that I am ready, I find nature more beautiful than ever, paradoxical as this may sound. I have seen, loved, and understood more than others."

Literary style and themes

Akutagawa was a stylistic perfectionist. His themes were often of a macabre nature, sometimes approaching Gothic themes. He wrote with a large amount of aestheticism. Akutagawa's primary themes include human egoism and the value of art. Akutagawa wrote 150 short stories and novellas during his career.

Influences

From a young age and throughout his life, Akutagawa studied western literature. He wrote his dissertation on English writer William Morris. Akutagawa also read a large amount of Chinese classics]]. Some of the writers whom Akutagawa drew inspiration from include August Strindberg, Prosper Mérimée, August Strindberg, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Charles Baudelaire, Nicholai Gogol, Jonathan Swift, and Leo Tolstoy. In particular, he studied grotesque writers Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka. Akutagawa included allusions to Christian, Chinese, and Russian literature in his works.

From Japanese literature, Akutagawa found inspiration in works from the shogunate period to the late sixteenth-century.

Ancient settings with modern psychological ideas

Most of Akutagawa's early works borrowed stories from ancient Japanese folklore, but updated them to reflect modern thought and psychological process. He often retold this legends or histories with a modern psychological perspective. For example, The Nose was based off of the 1107 AD myth Tales of Times Now Past. Sources for Akutagawa's stories include Konjaku monogatari, Meiji era anecdotes, early Japanese Christian works.

For example, Rashōmon is set in Edo Period Japan, in twelfth-century Kyoto. A former servant and old woman meet on top of a gate where corpses are disposed. There, the servant must decide whether to steal from the woman or starve, creating a conflict between morality and survival. This story reflects a modern psychological interpretation of the relationship between survivalism and self-preservation. As critic Richard Benton puts it, Rashōmon "suggests that people have the morality they can afford."

I Novel

Akutagawa's later work shifted towards the Japanese style of autobiography known as the I Novel. His biographical work often mused on socialism and social class. Akutagawa first began writing in the I Novel format at the age of 25, writing brief confessional stories which often revolved around Akutagawa's belief that he was going insane. His work soon began reflecting his drug addiction and desire to die, darkening the tone of his work as a whole.

Two of his I Novel's, Cogwheels and A Fool's Life, describe a feeling of absolute terror, a madness which took over his life and became the major theme in his work.

Essays

Akutagawa wrote a number of critical essays, mostly on the state of literature both in Japan and abroad. However, some of his essays also dealt with political subjects, like the 1927 What is Proletarian Literature, in which Akutagawa predicted the bourgeoisie would one day give their positions to the proletariat.

Legacy

Akutagawa's short stories In a Grove and Rashōmon provided the inspiration and plot of the Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon. In 1935, Kikuchi Kan established the Akutagawa Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Japan.

References

• Henderson, Andrea Kovacs (2002). "Akutagawa, Ryunosuke (1892-1927)". Encyclopedia of World Biography. Gale. Retrieved 21 August 2009.