The life and work of the Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Akutagawa Ryunosuke is rightfully considered a classic of new Japanese literature. He lived a short life, but managed to create many wonderful works. His sons continued their creative path: one of them (Hiroshi) became a playwright, and the second (Yasushi) became a composer.

Private life of writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke

Akutagawa Ryunosuke was born in Tokyo in 1892 in the family of a poor milk seller. His name, meaning "dragon", was given to him in honor of the year and hour of his birth.

His father and mother, by Japanese standards, were not young: 40 and 30 years old respectively. It was considered bad luck in those days. When the writer was only 9 months old, his mother committed suicide in an insane asylum. His father was unable to raise his son alone, which is why Ryunoskache was adopted by his uncle Michiaki Akutagawa, whose surname he later adopted.

His family was intelligent and in the past included many pundits and writers, carefully observed all traditions, family members were fond of literature and painting of the Middle Ages, strictly observed the old way of life, based on obedience to the head of the house.

Ryunosuke suffered from visual hallucinations, he saw larvae and insects infood. On July 24, 1927, he took a lethal dose of veronal. In his last note, he wrote that the world in which he lives is transparent as ice, and death grants, though not happiness, but liberation.

Study

From 1913 to 1916, Ryunosuke Akutagawa studied English at the Imperial University of Tokyo. His thesis was dedicated to William Morris. Throughout his life, Akutagawa was a faithful reader of novels by Western authors.

He started writing short stories during his studies. The first work was a translation of Anatole France's Belshazzar in 1914. And the next year, together with a couple of friends, he created a literary magazine, where he published his story "Rashemon Gate". The plot of this work begins in Kyoto in the 12th century, where a man who was a servant in the past is trying to save his life in a ruined town. He is faced with a choice between good and criminal deeds.

Work

After graduating from university, Akutagawa begins teaching at the Yokosuka Military School and around the same time marries a girl named Tsukamoto Fumiko. He was invited to work by the universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, but he decided to devote himself entirely to literature. As a result, he became an employee of a small newspaper in Osaka, as a correspondent he even visited China, but could not write anything there due to a sudden illness.

Creative path

Almost all of his works Akutagawa Ryunosuke wrote ten years before his death. Among the early works werewell-thought-out historical stories. Later, emotions and the spirit of modernity take over. Fame comes to him with the story "The Nose", written in 1916, which was based on "Stories of Past Times". In this artwork, a Buddhist monk is worried about his oversized nose.

Although the author had never been to the West, he was very familiar with the works of Nietzsche, Mérimée, Baudelaire and Tolstoy. In his short story "Gears", he makes reference to two of his favorite authors, "Legends" by August Strindberg and "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert.

Among the autobiographical novels of Akutagawa Ryunosuke, it is worth noting the book "The Early Years of Daidoji Shinsuke" written in 1925, which remained unfinished, "The Life of an Idiot" and "Gear Wheels" in 1927.

One of the most significant works of the writer is considered "In the country of the water" (1927). In this story, the life of Japanese society is satirically depicted through the description of folkloric kappa creatures. The plot is based on a patient in a psychiatric hospital, who tells the story of his unusual journey to an underground country, which he desperately does not want to leave.

Akutagawa Ryunosuke's screen adaptations

Of the 150 stories written, some were filmed, for example, "Rashomon" and "In the thicket" became the basis of the famous film "Anger" by Akira Kurosova, in 1964 it was even re-shot by Hollywood, however, unsuccessfully.

In 1969, Shiro Toyoda made a film-drama "Pictures of Hell" based on the novel "The Torments of Hell", which takes place in Japanfourteenth century. In the center of the plot is a talented but harmful Korean artist Yoshihide, who is in the service of a despotic and we althy Japanese official Horikawa. Horikawa instructs the artist to paint a picture of paradise on one of the walls of the palace, but Yoshihide refuses, because he does not see anything even remotely similar to paradise in the domain. Instead, he portrays an old poor peasant who was killed by Horikawa's army.

This picture is so realistic and frightening that it begins to haunt the official in his dreams. Then Horikawa kidnaps the artist's daughter, forcing him to write a heavenly story in exchange for her life.

The artist agrees, but fails to relocate himself and paints an official burning alive in his own carriage. Horikawa, in a rage, kills Yoshihide's daughter in the same way right in front of his eyes, which drives the artist to suicide. In the final scene of the film, Horikawa looks at the last painting of the artist with horror in his eyes and the ghost of Yoshihide begins to haunt him.

Akutagawa Ryunosuke Name Award

In 1935, Kikuchi Kana, a close friend of the writer, established the Akutagawa Ryunosuke Literature Prize. Today, this is one of the most honorable awards that an aspiring writer in Japan can receive.

Over the years, Reichi Tsuji "The Stranger" (1950), Atsushi Mori "Moon Mountain" (1973), Ayamada Hiroko "The Hole" (2013), Yamashita Sumito "The New World" (2016) and many other authors who subsequently became famous not only in Japan, but throughoutworld.