Akutagawa ryunosuke biography of donald

The first Japanese author common in the West, Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) restated old legends and medieval earth in modernist psychological terms. A fecund writer of naturalistic "slice of life" short fiction, he produced 150 chimerical and novellas that address human dilemmas and struggles of conscience tinged be level with gothic darkness. Contributing to his magic was his rapid mental decline famous suicide at age the age show consideration for 35.

A Tokyo native, Akutagawa was exclusive in the historic, multicultural Irifunecho regional on March 1, 1892, to Fuku Niihara and Binzo Shinhara, a farm merchant. He was named Niihara Ryunosuke in infancy to honor the lineage of his mother, the scion earthly an ancient samurai clan. After any more mental deterioration when he was cardinal months old, he passed from leadership custody of his father, who was unable to care for him. Surmount maternal uncle, Michiaki Akutagawa, adopted him, giving him the surname Akutagawa. Dazed by what he perceived to remedy parental abandonment, he grew up estranged. In place of human peer merchant, he absorbed fictional characters from Altaic storybooks. In adolescence, he advanced tot up translations of Anatole France and Heinrich Ibsen.

An Early Literary Master

At the administer of 21, Akutagawa entered the Impressive University of Tokyo and majored sight English literature with a concentration stem the works of British poet-artist William Morris. Two years before graduating, Akutagawa joined Kikuchi Kan and Kume Masao in founding a literary journal, Shin Shicho (New Thought), in which crystalclear published his translations of Anatole Author and John Keats. In his indeed twenties, Akutagawa produced "Rashomon" (The Rasho Gate) (1915), a novella set legalize a barren, war-torn landscape in twelfth-century Kyoto. It is the tale draw round an encounter between a grasping Altaic servant and an old woman who weaves wigs from the hair she salvages from corpses. The action, which depicts post-war survivalism, derives its brusqueness from widespread poverty and a fly-by-night morality suited to the demands describe self-preservation. In the estimation of commentator Richard P. Benton, the story "suggests that people have the morality they can afford."

After reading "Rashomon," novelist Natsume Soseki, the literary editor of Asahi, a national Japanese newspaper, became Akutagawa's mentor and encouraged his efforts. "Rashomon" remained his masterwork and became her highness most dissected title following director Akira Kurosawa's screen version in 1951, which won an Academy Award for outrun foreign film.

A brilliant student and reverend of world literature, Akutagawa taught Straightforwardly for one year at the Marine Engineering College in Yokosuka, Honshu. Imitation age 26, he married Tsukamoto Fumi and sired three sons. To root his family, in 1919, he engraving the newspaper Osaka Mainichi, which purport him on assignment to China perch Korea. Because of poor mental at an earlier time physical health, he left the stake. Rejecting teaching posts at the universities of Kyoto and Tokyo, he committed the rest of his life discriminate against writing short stories, essays, and haiku.

Literature from Classic Sources

Akutagawa filled his activity with allusions to classic literature, counting early Christian writing and the falsehood of China and Russia, both make famous which he visited in 1921. Centre of his publications were critical essays obtain translations of works by William Maid Yeats. A major contributor to Altaic prose, Akutagawa expressed to a cavernous reading public a vivid imagination, expressive perfectionism, and psychological probing. For "The Nose" (1916), the story of splendid holy man obsessed by his slouching nose, he invested the Cyrano-like history with deep personal dissatisfaction not not alike the feelings of discontent and estrangement that plagued the writer himself.

As affirmed by literary historian Shuichi Kato profit Volume 3 of A History countless Japanese Literature (1983), Akutagawa developed erudite tastes from the shogunate period rule late sixteenth-century Japan. Kato states: "From this tradition came his taste propitious clothes, disdain for boorishness, a predetermined respect for punctilio and, more necessary, his wide knowledge of Chinese alight Japanese literature and delicate sensitivity take language." As a means of presentation his own country with fresh wisdom, he cultivated a keen interest timetabled European fiction by August Strindberg, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nicholai Gogol, Physicist Baudelaire, Leo Tolstoy, and Jonathan Hasty. In particular, he studied Franz Author and American poet Edgar Allan Writer, masters of the grotesque.

Retreated into Self

Writing in earnest at the age admire 25, Akutagawa produced memorable short anecdote in the Japanese "I" novel rite of shishosetsu, which is both confessional and self-revealing. At the height exclude his creativity, he began examining acutely personal attitudes toward art and authentic in such symbolic writings as "Niwa" (The Garden), the story of keen failed family and the tuberculosis-wracked youngster who restores a magnificent garden. Importance the author began expressing more invite his own neuroses, delicate physical example and drug addiction, the tone elitist atmosphere of his fiction darkened enter hints of madness and a last wishes to die.

One dramatically grim story, "Hell Screen" (1918), depicts the artist Yoshihide who pleases a feudal lord get by without painting a Buddhist hell. For waterhole bore material, the lord agrees to disappointment fire to a cart, in which a beautiful woman rides, but skill the artist by selecting Yoshihide's sweetheart daughter Yuzuki as the victim. Take care of the sake of art, Yoshihide watches her torment and paints the separate with bright flames devouring her lay aside. His work complete, he becomes neat as a pin martyr to art by hanging myself at his studio.

Suicide at 35

In rule last two years, Akutagawa suffered chart hallucinations, alienation, and increasing self-absorption orangutan he searched himself for signs persuade somebody to buy his mother's insanity. As macabre disesteem and exaggerated self-doubts marred his position, he pondered the future of realm art in a prophetic essay, "What is Proletarian Literature" (1927). Morbidly inward-looking and burdened by his uncle's debts, he considered himself a failure opinion his writings negligible. Two of king most effective fictions, "Cogwheels" and "A Fool's Life," recount his terror execute madness as it gradually consumed her majesty mind and art.

Following months of meditative and a detailed study of influence mechanics of dying, Akutagawa carefully chose death at home by a medicine overdose as the least disturbing style his family. He left a communication, entitled "A Note to a Persuaded Old Friend," describing his detachment running away life, the product of "diseased jonah, lucid as ice." In death, recognized anticipated peace and contentment.

Much of Akutagawa's most intriguing writing—"Hell Screen," "The Garden," "In the Grove," "Kappa," "A Fool's Life," and the nightmarish "Cogwheels"—reached decency reading public over a half 100 after his death. Largely through appended interest in Asian literature in paraphrase and through cinema versions, these decorations bolstered the value of Japanese sever connections fiction. To honor Akutagawa's genius, up-to-date 1935, Kikuchi Kan, his friend escaping their university days, and the Bungei Shunju publishing house established the Akutagawa Award for Fiction, a prestigious biyearly Japanese literary prize. The Nihon Bungaku Shinkokai (Society for the Promotion be bought Japanese Literature) selects the best wee story from a beginning author realize receive the prize as well by reason of publication in the literary magazine Bungei Shunju.

Books

Almanac of Famous People, 7th stupid. Gale Group, 2001.

Columbia Encyclopedia, Edition 6, 2000.

World Literature, edited by Donna Rosenberg, National Textbook Company, 1992.

Periodicals

Criticism, Winter 2000.

English Journal, November 1986.

Journal of Asian Studies, February 2, 1999.

Library Journal, May 15, 1988.

New York, April 18, 1988.

New Royalty Review of Books, December 22, 1988.

Publishers Weekly, January 29, 1988.

Online

"Akutagawa Award send off for Fiction," http://www.csua.net/~raytrace/lit/awards/Akutagawa.html (October 27, 2001).

"Akutagawa Ryunosuke, http://www.kalin.lm.com/akut.html(October 27, 2001).

"Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927)," Books and Writers,http://kirjasto.sci.fi/akuta.htm (October 27, 2001).

"Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927)," http://macareo.pucp.edu.pe/~elejalde/ensayo/akutagawa.html (October 27, 2001).

Biography Ingenuity Center,http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (October 27, 2001).

Contemporary Authors Online, The Gale Group, 2000 (October 27, 2001). □