A 30-second introduction

Ryunosuke Akutagawa: reshaping stories through short fiction

芥川龍之介

Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927) was a Japanese writer especially associated with short fiction. Classical sources, contemporary settings, children’s stories, essays and poetry all contributed to a varied writing career.

Portrait of Ryunosuke Akutagawa. National Diet Library material; photograph date unspecified.

Rashomon first appeared in 1915.
The Nose won Natsume Soseki’s praise in 1916.
His first story collection, Rashomon, appeared in 1917.

Study, teaching and publication

Born in Tokyo and later adopted into the Akutagawa family, he studied English literature at university. Student literary activity and Soseki’s recognition of The Nose helped his early career. He also taught English after graduation, leaving that work in 1919 to concentrate more fully on writing and newspaper activity.

What changes in a retelling?

Rashomon reshapes material from the medieval Konjaku Monogatari collection around a servant’s hesitation and argument for survival. In a Grove, published in 1922, makes the reader confront incompatible testimony. After accounts from witnesses such as a woodcutter and a travelling priest, three speakers give different causes of Takehiro’s death: Tajomaru claims to have killed him in a duel; his wife Masago says she stabbed him; and the dead man, speaking through a medium, describes his own suicide. No final, authoritative narrator settles which account is true.

One death, three accounts

Tajomaru
Claims to have killed Takehiro in a duel.
Masago
Says she stabbed her husband.
Takehiro’s spirit
Describes suicide through a medium.

These are the speakers’ claims. The story provides no final verdict.

Stories for other readers

Stories for different readers

The Spider’s Thread and Tu Tze-chun are children’s stories drawing on Buddhist or Chinese material. The Spider’s Thread appeared in the first issue of the children’s magazine Akai Tori in 1918; Tu Tze-chun followed in 1920. Essays, travel writing, haiku and Chinese verse further broadened Akutagawa’s work beyond historical short fiction.

Visiting China as a journalist

Newspaper work also took him to contemporary China. From March 1921, Akutagawa spent about four months travelling there as an overseas observer for the Osaka Mainichi. The travel materials presented by the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Literature document a different encounter from adapting classical stories: he was now gathering impressions while on a newspaper assignment.

Late work and later readers

Draft of section 34, “Colour,” in A Fool’s Life, 1927. Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Literature collection. Detail reproduced in Kanagawa museum exhibition material.

Akutagawa’s ink painting of a kappa returning in the evening, undated. Museum of Modern Japanese Literature collection. Detail reproduced in Kanagawa museum exhibition material.

Late work and surviving drafts

Akutagawa’s late work included Cogwheels and A Fool’s Life, both from 1927, the year of his death. A surviving draft of section 34, “Colours,” of A Fool’s Life preserves traces of his writing process. His ink paintings also reveal artistic interests beyond literature.

Textbooks and adaptations

His readership continued to change through anthologies, translations and adaptations. Rashomon entered Japanese school textbooks in 1957; theatre, film and opera brought the fiction into other media.

Check your understanding

How can an older tale become new fiction?

Through new arrangements of viewpoint, thought, action and information.

Did Akutagawa write only historical short stories?

No. Children’s stories, essays, travel writing and poetry are also part of his work.

What distinguishes Rashomon in 1915 and 1917?

The first date is the story’s appearance; the second is his first collection.

How do the three main accounts explain Takehiro’s death?

They describe death in a duel, a killing by his wife, and suicide. The story leaves the conflict unresolved.

Sources and images