“The district in which I was born,” wrote Akutagawa Ryūnosuke in 1912, “lies near the banks of the Great River.” Still in secondary school when he composed a youthfully exuberant encomium to the lower reaches of the Sumidagawa, flowing through the heart of Japan’s capital and into the bay, he was already composing autobiographical fiction. In fact, the author was born in Akaishi, on the western side of the river, not far from Tsukiji. His boyhood home was Mukōjima, situated on the eastern bank, across from Asakusa, and known for its geisha and teahouses. The date of his birth was March 1, 1892.
As is clear from the stories, Akutagawa was a voracious and eclectic reader. Since boyhood, he had been particularly fond of the classical folktale collection Konjaku Monogatari [Tales of Times Now Past]. While still a student, he wrote several ironic and psychologically insightful adaptations of these (cf. “Fortune”). If judged solely by titles, the most famous of these is Rashōmon, published in 1915, though in actual content, it is Yabu no Naka [In a Grove] (1922), which centers on a crime of rape and murder (or suicide) related from multiple perspectives. It is this story that forms the basis of Kurosawa Akira’s renowned 1950 film Rashōmon. Though the film’s title is only peripherally related to Akutagawa’s tale of the same name, it has nonetheless become the source of rashomonesque, an epithet for the theme of subjectivism.
In his later years, Akutagawa suffered greatly from physical and psychological ailments, the latter aggravated by his fear of hereditary insanity. On July 24, 1927, a Bible beside his bed, Akutagawa took an overdose of Veronal. Included in letters left for his wife and friends is the oft-cited, cryptic explanation: “a vague sort of anxiety about my future” (boku no shōrai ni tai-suru tada bon’yari to shita fuan). The event was cause for a huge media sensation, and these words in particular were seized upon by pundits as somehow symbolic of the times and portentous for Japan.
It is not difficult to imagine that Akutagawa himself would have found it all both amusing and exasperating. In 1935, a literary prize in his honor was established at the suggestion of his friend and fellow writer, Kikuchi Kan (1888–1948), by the magazine Bungei-Shunjū. In the West, Akutagawa’s name, though hardly unknown, is most likely to be associated with those stories containing macabre or supernatural elements, with the theme of Rashōmon, or simply with Japan’s oft-noted history of literary suicides. His more famous works have been translated and retranslated, with considerable variation in literary skill, leaving Akutagawa to suffer less from obscurity than from typecasting. The present collection, containing several stories made available to the English-speaking audience for the first time, is intended to contribute to a richer understanding and appreciation of this, one of Japan’s early modern literary giants.
The original texts are taken from the Akutagawa-zenshū [The Complete Works of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke], Volumes 1–4, published by Chikumashobō, Tōkyō, 1964 [1970]. Japanese names are given in East Asian order, surname preceding personal name. Chinese names and words are treated according to context. The name of the Chinese restaurant in “An Evening Conversation” is rendered in Sino-Japanese: Tōtōtei, not Táotáo-díng; on the other hand, the word that the narrator in “Cogwheels” would presumably have pronounced as Sino-Japanese kirin is represented in qílín.
A brief note about the Romanization of Japanese and Chinese names may be in order. The macron over vowels (e.g. ō vs. o) indicates length for Japanese words. For Chinese words, the four tones are marked, e.g. ō, ó, ǒ, and ò. For Japanese words, n before m, p, and b is pronounced m.
Resisting a propensity widespread among academics, I have kept the notes to a minimum. Particularly for “The Life of a Fool” and “Cogwheels,” where literary references and autobiographical allusions abound, the temptation to “explain” has been strong—and thus partially placated with “Additional Terminology” at the end. Curious readers may avail themselves of that appendix, though it is not—and is not intended to be—complete. Not even Akutagawa’s own Japanese contemporaries would have understood all of his fragmentary and troubled musings at the end of his life, and to relentlessly render factual—historical or biographical—what should be left as literary would surely spoil the story.
I wish to express boundless gratitude to Jill Schoolman for her wisdom and patience over several years, as I struggled to complete this work, and to Masako Nakamura, from whose keen eye, extraordinary linguistic sense, cross-cultural learning, and unending generosity I have undeservedly benefited for more than twenty years. Finally, to my family and above all to my wife, Keiko: Arigatō gozaimasu.