Monday, January 24, 2022

Akutagawa's Rashōmon and 17 Other Stories - I sensed the agency of the finger of destiny and felt compelled to read that passage

The book in front of me is Rashōmon and 17 Other Stories by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, the cute 2006 Penguin with the manga cover and Murakami Haruki introduction, translated by Jay Rubin.  I’m trying to stick to the Japanese convention where the family name comes first, but I make no promises about consistency. 

I’d never read Akutagawa before. 

I liked it a lot, enough that I immediately started another, earlier collection, Rashomon and Other Stories (Liveright, 1952, tr. Takashi Kojima), to fill in some gaps.  Murakami insisted on a story called “Yam Gruel,” not in the book he introduced.  He was right, “Yam Gruel” is good, from the title on.    Apparently yam gruel was a Heian delicacy, as unlikely as that sounds.

Akutagawa only wrote for twelve years before, physically and mentally ill, killing himself in 1927 when he was 35.  With such a short life, I was not expecting his writing to have phases, but they are pretty clear.  He had some big hits right away, famous stories like “In a Bamboo Grove” and “Hell Screen,” modernized versions of grotesque old tales, generally set, like those two, in the decadent end of the Heian period.  He also has a set of 17th and 18th century stories, often about Christian martyrs.  The attraction is clearly to the martyrdom, the tortures, another form of grotesquerie.  Many of these stories are horror stories, really, “Hell Screen” most obviously, where a lunatic painter commissioned to depict Hell tortures his assistants and worse in the name of realism:

And the kinds of torture were as numberless as the sinners themselves – flogging with an iron scourge, crushing under a gigantic rock, pecking by a monstrous bird, grinding in the jaws of a poisonous serpent…  (51, ellipses in original)

But the painter can only paint what he has seen, so the story fills in how he saw some of those horrors.  And worse.  I can see how this 1918 story, and others like it, made Akutagawa a star.

I could almost see the literal, experiential painter as some kind of parody of Naturalism, which leads to phase three (phase two is a crisis in the early 1920s).  Late in his life – what turns out to be late – Akutagawa turns to autobiographical writing, whether as fiction or memoir or unusual fragments.  The Penguin collection gives a third of its pages to “Akutagawa’s Own Story” in six varied texts, a chronicle of the author’s anguish and fear, aside from the interesting details about Tokyo and its literary scene, including the complex integration of European literature, especially French and Russian, by a generation of Japanese writers.

Bringing to mind the paper rose petals on the street, however, I decided to buy Conversations with Anatole France a d The Collected Letters of Prosper Mérimée.  (223)

But as the writer’s mental health fails he shifts from his early French influences to Dostoevsky and Strindberg.  In a curious scene, the author picks up Crime and Punishment but finds himself reading The Brothers Karamazov:

The bindery had accidentally included pages from the wrong book.  That I had, in turn, accidentally opened the book to those misbound pages: I sensed the agency of the finger of destiny and felt compelled to read that passage.  Before I had read a single page, however, my entire body began to tremble.  It was the scene in which the devil torments Ivan.  Ivan, Strindberg, and Maupassant – and, here in this room, me… (231, ellipses in original)

Another kind of horror literature, that of incipient schizophrenia.

Dolce Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge, running through March, is in its 15th year!  That is impressive.  I had better go register this piece.

 

17 comments:

  1. I hope this post gets more people to read Akutagawa. I love Akutagawa, much prefer him to Kawabata or Tanizaki.
    "Hell Screen" is the best, probably one of my favourite short stories in general. What do you think about "Horse Legs", or the story about the dragon (I forgot what it's called)?

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  2. I have doubts that I get many people to read much in particular. Maybe, though.

    "Horse Legs" is a good example of a comic story that turns into horror. The Chinese setting was a curiosity. The dragon story, in the Rubin translation, omits a long frame story or something, since it is in the older translation in a complete version, which I have not yet read. Anyway, a classic prank story. "Yam Gruel" is also a prank story. Akutagawa's contemporary Kipling also loved prank stories. What is going on there?

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    1. I don't think I've read "Yam Gruel".
      Looks like I have to find the complete version of the dragon story then.

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  3. I just read another Christian martyr story ("The Martyr"). I'll let you know when I get to the dragon story. In two days, I guess.

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  4. I enjoy your posts so much, Tom, as they are filled with far more than what it is that you have read. Are reading. Will read. And, let’s not make any Yam Gruel, okay? Although that might get those pesky Christmas pounds off…

    Here it is so long ago when I read this collection that I cannot comment lucidly on Rashomon other than to remember I liked it very much. It is made into a black and white film, too, which was directed by Akira Kurosawa and called, “perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice.”

    Of course, we are talking books here, though, so I leave with your mention of Christian martyrdom by mentioning Silence, by Shusaku Endo, an extremely fine book to me.

    Oh, one more thing: the Akutagawa Prize was created in 1935 to honor Ryunosuke Akutagawa…finally, I put that together in my mind with the help of your post. Thanks for reading, for writing, for participating in the JLC lo these many years.

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  5. The two stories that go into Rashomon are so famous I figured I should skip them. They're good.

    The set of Christian martyrdom stories surprised me. I had thought Endo was more of an exception, but Akutagawa wrote several of them, perhaps with a different purpose.

    Thanks for keeping the Japanese Literature Challenge going. It is quite a record. I will likely get another book or two in by March.

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    1. That would be great (for you to get another one or two in before March). Thanks for participating!

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  6. p.s. I’d love to do another read along with you in 2022. Just not Greek plays.

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  7. Yes, that would be nice. I hope to stay in the 1930s and 1940s for a while, but who knows.

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    1. Ah, then we could do The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand published in 1943…or, something else.

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  8. Oh no, sorry, that won't work, I find Rand appalling on every level, most importantly aesthetically.

    What do I really want to get read this year, in terms of novels? A lot of Faulkner, Nabokov's last Russian masterpieces, Grapes of Wrath after 35 years, Henry Green - you might like Henry Green, The Man Who Loved Children, Under the Volcano, All the King's Men. Wait, have you read Delta Wedding? We should read Delta Wedding. What a book!

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    1. I would consider Grapes of Wrath (especially as it seems we’re almost heading in the same direction). I loved All the Kings Men, and have enjoyed the Henry Green I’ve read. Delta Wedding sounds good…I have to “get through” the International Booker Prize long list, which won’t be announced until March. So, we could do something before, or after, if you would like.

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    2. The Steinbeck and Welty both work well as summer books. August books. They also seem like books where you - perhaps me, definitely you - could gather together a good group of readers.

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    3. Let’s mark our calendars for August, either one or both.

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    4. Good, we'll see how we're doing in July.

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  9. Ah, Akutagawa is amazing, isn't he, and you are right, I can see the links to Dostoevsky, Rimbaud, Strindberg and the like. I am not surprised that Dazai Osamu revered him - very similar sort of sensibility (and mental struggle).

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  10. I need to read Dazai Osamu. The one Tony just reviewed sounds like it would go well with the Akutagawa book.

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