Ryūnosuke AkutagawaReviews

An interesting read, I do think the introduction (although perhaps not all of it) gives some very necessary context to the story. Satire is definitely one of those genres that can get lost as time moves on and context is lost, which makes some history a necessity to actually understand where the author is trying to go and what they are doing. I do not regret this book, but I also do not find myself eager to pick it up again.

"[M]élységesen bölcs metafora a társadalomról, vagy egyszerűen nonszensz" - olvastam @Kuszma értékelésében, és gyorsan kölcsön is kértem, mert mindkettőt (mindhármat) szeretem. Szerintem nem nonszensz, de nem baj. Inkább gulliveriáda ezekkel a lényekkel, saját nyelvükkel, az emberi társadalmat, művészetet, vallásokat erősen fricskázó szokásaikkal. Ha valahol kidolgozatlannak vagy csapongónak tűnik, azt írhatjuk az elbeszélő elmebetegségének (vagy a szöveg rövidségének, vagy a szerző zaklatott állapotának*) számlájára.

*Ez az egyik utolsó műve, ahogy a könyvében szereplő kappa költő, úgy Akutagava is öngyilkos lett, még abban az évben, amikor ez a szöveg megjelent.

There are several stories in this collection well worth 5 stars... and a few that are not. However, and this is a controversial decision in my own mind, the lesser stories still provide a key view into the authors.... disintegration. The last few in the collection, all published posthumously, are in fact difficult to read because of the writing... but also because the writer is clearly in a final downward spiral. It is uncomfortable because you are, essentially, reading someone's diary, and reading that they are going to kill themselves.

For that, I give an overall 5 stars, though perhaps it should be 4.

Como ya lo mencionaron, la traducción resulta muy mala, tanto que no te permite apreciar los cuentos.

The story is formed in short reports like strobe lights illuminating a group of figurines which are moved significantly between flashes, so every view is an impression of a different story with a few common objects. I think it is a meditation on how little of the truth is recoverable and how much it varies from person to person.

Great short story, I have the sensation that the translation took some liberties here and there but I don't know.

I will watch the film that was inspired by this named Rashomon

A small collection of short stories by the literary giant of the Taisho era, Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Superbly crafted, each work displays his characteristic blend of east and west, with a vague unease behind the characters and plots. This is a book to be read and reread, as there is just too much to unpack in just one sitting.

bungou stray dogs made me do it

I liked 'Death Register' and 'The Life of a Stupid Man' for the way that that makes you think twice about the morbid and mundane, and I like the structure of 'In a Bamboo Grove' (told as a series of witness statements, where noone tells the story of the same event the same way) but the story itself - its chosen subject - is unpleasant at best and the betrays the cultural misogyny of the time which left a bitter taste over all the rest of the book for me, and so I couldn't fully enjoy it from there.

Also, the latter 2 stories (Death Register and The Life of a Stupid Man) are autobiographical while the first one is fictional. In a Bamboo Grove is easier to follow, but unpleasant, while the latter 2 are harder to follow but poetically written and thought provoking.

In a Bamboo grove I would say for me is 2⭐
Death Register and The Life of a Stupod Man for me are 4⭐

I liked 'Death Register' and 'The Life of a Stupid Man' for the way that that makes you think twice about the morbid and mundane, and I like the structure of 'In a Bamboo Grove' (told as a series of witness statements, where noone tells the story of the same event the same way) but the story itself - its chosen subject - is unpleasant at best and the betrays the cultural misogyny of the time which left a bitter taste over all the rest of the book for me, and so I couldn't fully enjoy it from there.

Also, the latter 2 stories (Death Register and The Life of a Stupid Man) are autobiographical while the first one is fictional. In a Bamboo Grove is easier to follow, but unpleasant, while the latter 2 are harder to follow but poetically written and thought provoking.

In a Bamboo grove I would say for me is 2⭐
Death Register and The Life of a Stupod Man for me are 4⭐

Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa is a small collection of short stories that have been translated into English. This version was an inexpensive copy for the Kindle so there were a few problems with the set up and editing but I was still very impressed with this author’s writing. Rashomon, is probably best known as a film by the well-known Japanese director Kurosawa. I believe the film is actually a combination of the first two stories in the book.

All six stories in this collection were interesting but I particularly liked the first four. The opening story, The Grove was a fascinating murder story that was exposed through conflicting eyewitness accounts. This was followed by Rashomon which is a dark story that raises questions about violence, power and desperation. I then enjoyed Yam Gruel which was based on an old Japanese myth. This story seemed to be an example of being careful what you wish for. This was a slightly funny, slightly melancholy story of a lowly samurai who dreams of someday having a feast of yam gruel. I found The Martyr, a story about an orphan boy who lived by the words of Jesus and suffered like him both strange and tragic. The twist at the end of the story makes it rather unforgettable. I wasn’t quite as taken by the other two stories, “Kesa and Morito” about an extra-marital affair and finally “The Dragon” which sees a practical joke go awry

Over all this was an insightful collection from a master storyteller and, it was well worth reading these absorbing and thought-provoking tales.

In Japanese!

Along with the titular "Rashomon," this collection features Akutagawa's most famous short story, "In a Grove" (titled "In a Bamboo Grove" in this collection; the actual basis of the film Rashomon). In addition to those two best-known stories, "Hell Screen" and "The Story of a Head That Fell Off" are my personal favorites by this author.

It's funny that "Rashomon" is almost always included in the title of any Akutagawa collection. I guess no one would buy "In a Grove" and Seventeen Other Stories.

This is the kind of book I wish I'd written. I will have to read other titles available from Tut Books, including "Poo Poo Make Prant Grow," no joke.

Akutagawa is one of my favorite writers. He took his own life with barbiturates at age 35 and left behind some 300 stories, sketches, articles and literary experiments. In English he has appeared in over a dozen collections of the same 20-30 most famous stories retranslated a dozen times. This latest collection, translated by the consummate Jay Rubin, has a lovingly detailed introduction by the inimitable Haruki Murakami. It is a mere sampling of 18 stories from his impossibly good body of work. Unlike Toson, Soseki and Tanizaki, Akutagawa did not embark on massive literary projects. Instead, he honed his craft with precision and an appreciation for classic storytelling. I have read some of his stories ten times, and they always elicit a strong response from me.

In a lot of ways, he resembles Gogol, and even composed an homage with his story "The Nose." Though different in content, the tone is reminiscent of the Russian master. This is one of the masterpieces contained in this treasury. The others include: "Rashomon, In a Bamboo Grove, Hell Screen, Spinning Gears, Death Register, and the Life of a Stupid Man." Even the ones that are not masterworks per se, are extremely entertaining. "Green Onions, The Story of the Head that Fell Off, Horse Legs, and Loyalty" fall into this category. If you are new to this author, you may not enjoy all of his tales, but I believe you will appreciate many aspects of his singular talent.

He writes a few different types of stories: 1). retellings of classic tales from Chinese and other sources. These read a little like fables. 2.) Autobiographical tales: these are often depressing, taking details of his haunted life and casting them bleakly against the backdrop of his times. 3). Religious tales like "Christ of Nanking" (not included in the collection) and others. Historical tales, taking place well before the author's time but possessing uncanny verisimilitude.

In his stories you will find traces of his influences: Anatole France, Strindberg, Merimee, Goethe, Nagoya Shiga, Soseki, Toson, Tanizaki, Basho, Doppo, Ogai, Pu Songling and dozens of other European and Chinese authors. He has rewritten stories from Pu Songling's collections as well as retold many from the seminal Japanese proto-mythologies.

Akutagawa draws from Buddhism, Shintoism, Christianity and Myth. I think he is one of the most interesting writers I have ever encountered because he processes other literary worlds into new forms. Even when he waxes esoteric, he is charming and insightful. He explores human nature with deep characters and memorable comedy and tragedy.

This brilliant edition includes thorough notes by Rubin explaining the finer points of the stories. There is enough material in this singular Penguin edition to write a dissertation on Akutagawa. Jay Rubin has put in an astounding effort toward accuracy and illumination. I only wish he would continue with further volumes of stories.

If you appreciate the stories of Chekhov, Gogol, Maupassant, and Dostoyevsky, you will find a lot to love about this author. Typically, you can expect tortured artists, explorations of morality and death, futility and hope, love and loss. Very classic themes. "Green Onions" and "O-gin" were odd but welcome selections for this book. Overall, it is the most well-rounded collection of the author's writings in English.

I have so far discovered 107 Akutagawa tales in English. I've read every anthology of Japanese literature, every collection of his tales and tracked down out of print Japanese-American periodicals through JSTOR. I want to thank Ryan C. K. Choi and N. A. Feathers for publishing new translations of his work on their websites. This incredible author has not gotten a full treatment in English and I implore translators to get to work on making his complete works available. So far we have only about 900 pages of stories, when obscure, ancient masters like Pu Songling have been translated more comprehensively. Along with this collection you will want to read two more collections: Mandarins, translated by Charles de Wolf, and The Beautiful and Grotesque, which includes "Kappa," his novella.

Though Akutagawa's accomplishment is profoundly important (far more so, I would argue, than Murakami claims in his indicting introduction), one wonders what heights Akutagawa might have reached had he endured the agonies of his intellectual rigors for decades longer. Was he capable of writing novels? Were the demons he wrote about in "Spinning Gears" exaggerated or as sincerely recorded as in Strindberg's Inferno? These questions will never be answered. But part of his appeal is how digestible and varied his work is.

This is undoubtedly one of the greatest short story collections by any Japanese or non-Western author.

I read the book that had 6 short stories in it and read it book in 1 day because it was so interesting, granted it is a short book.
Each story was interesting with each story having a moral to the story. I particularly enjoyed the story Martyr which was about a young boy accused of having intercourse with a young woman and impregnating her. The moral is to love and forgive, even when people do wrong by you.
I highly recommend this book - 4.5 stars

Japanese soft cover edition.
This was not my favorite of his, but I immediately connected with Akutagawa across the eighty or so years between us. I, too, suffer with 漠然とした不安 and occasionally wish someone would be so kind as to strangle me in my sleep!

The eerie mood set in the title story Rashomon stood out most writing wise, reread the story twice for that alone.
One story, consisting of monologues of Kesa and Morito, grated on me for how rape was handled back in the day, and if all the other stories are worth rereading, I'd skip this one, were I ever to return to the collection.

Akutagawa doesn't hold the readers hand and doesn't say what to think of the events in the stories. All are ambiguous one way or the other.
Quite a refreshing read.

I think ------ I need to think on this one.

I remember reading the long (40 or so pages) introduction to this book which is quite impressive in giving us a short biography of the author (and his interactions with contemporaries) and how that life was reflected in the book. What I don't remember is reading the actual story (and the story is bizarre enough that i think I would recall it). The author was clearly descending into drug abuse and madness from the information in the introduction and the book was written not long before his suicide at 35. The intro really improves ones' appreciation of the story which otherwise might come across as a Japanese fairytale but instead can be seen as that and something more. It is a satire on society. However, this would not be a fairytale for children. It is surreal in bizarre and sometimes graphic ways. I wonder how much the author's use of opium influenced this.

I can't rave about this story but I am very glad I read (or re-read) this.

I needed a couple of books by Japanese authors for book bingo, and as much as I love Mishima, I also know how long it takes me to make it through one of his books, so I picked up this slim copy of short stories a while ago.

Once I started reading it, it felt so intensely familiar, I wondered if I'd read it before. After a while I decided that it was only familiar from the movie Rashomon, which is based off of the first story in this collection, "In a Grove."

These stories are short, but searing. They are stories of murder and suffering and feeling caught -- like you have no choice but to do this thing that is wrong and will also make you terribly unhappy. No fluffy foxes here. More shame. But they are not heavy with darkness, but calculated.

Left me chewing on how society shapes identity, and how our perceptions shape reality.

Dated Early Modernism

I bought this because I ran across one of those great old Eridanos Library editions, and this one had a preface by Borges. Ryunosuke Akutagawa was an early 20th c. Japanese modernist, short-story writer, and friend (and critic) of Tanizaki. He died by suicide in his thirties, and one of the pieces translated here, "Cogwheels," was supposedly finished on the day he died.

I found these very much of their period. The narrators (all Akutagawa, variously undisguised) read Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Poe, and other standard sources, along with Anatole France, Yeats, and other fin-de-siecle writers (Akutagawa published translations of their works in a literary journal he helped run). He mentions Van Gogh in several pieces as an exemplar of real passion and modernity.

These are all familiar signposts of Japanese art in the 1920s, and to me the three pieces in this book all seem dated. In "A Fool's Life" he plays with prose poems, what would now be called flash fiction, and it's clear he is thinking of surrealism and of the Japanese tradition including Basho, rather than, say, imagism. "Cogwheels" is intended to show the narrator's dissociated frame of mind, and it does, but it mainly conveys the narrator's sense of a literary representation of dissociation.

Akutagawa's stories in this collection are largely centered upon issues of morality, exploring their vagaries and some extreme scenarios. Some stories feature Buddhists while others feature Christians, suggesting he was familiar with the tenants of more than one faith and that his interest in questions of morality was of a general nature.

In a Grove - various perspectives on a murder, with inherent contradictions. A reminder that our justice system is rarely confronted with black-and-white cases.

Rashomon - in which the central character undergoes a morality shift that allows an action he could not previously countenance. Changed circumstances create thinner walls between good and evil.

Yam Gruel - a man may bear much in life, so long as he has some dream to cling to. It is best to avoid losing that crutch, if one can help it.

The Martyr - a Japanese Jesuit harbours more than one secret. Appears to be based on a true story that would naturally appeal to this author.

Kesa and Morito - another clashing perspectives story, with a stronger ending. This and the last are my favourites in this collection.

The Dragon - a very timely story about false news, but with a twist that still has me turning it over in my mind hours later.½

This is a really good short story! A man is killed and a woman raped and we are presented with many different versions/perspectives of what happened! We hear from the attacker, the woman, various witnesses, and the deceased himself (through a medium)! And to be honest, I finished the story still wondering what the truth actually was! Well done!

Without the preface of this edition, the story reads as a flat, mildly amusing fairy tale. I agree with some of the other reviewers, that the introduction was more interesting than the story itself, and it allows for at least a biographical reading of the text that gives the story a little depth. I wish the introduction had given us a little more bearing on some of the aspects of Japanese society that Akutagawa is potentially satirizing, as I feel like this has turned into a research project because I don't understand it. I enjoyed some of his other short stories better.