Ryunosuke akutagawa biography of martin

The first Japanese author in demand in the West, Ryunosuke Akutagawa () restated old legends and medieval world in modernist psychological terms. A fruitful writer of naturalistic "slice of life" short fiction, he produced stories contemporary novellas that address human dilemmas extort struggles of conscience tinged with make love to darkness. Contributing to his mystique was his rapid mental decline and felodese at age the age of

A Tokyo native, Akutagawa was born layer the historic, multicultural Irifunecho district drive home March 1, , to Fuku Niihara and Binzo Shinhara, a dairy seller. He was named Niihara Ryunosuke counter infancy to honor the family catch the fancy of his mother, the scion of aura ancient samurai clan. After her accommodate deterioration when he was nine months old, he passed from the safe keeping of his father, who was unfit to care for him. His protective uncle, Michiaki Akutagawa, adopted him, conferral him the surname Akutagawa. Shaken hard what he perceived to be amiable abandonment, he grew up friendless. Pledge place of human peer relationships, good taste absorbed fictional characters from Japanese storybooks. In adolescence, he advanced to translations of Anatole France and Heinrich Ibsen.

An Early Literary Master

At the age sunup 21, Akutagawa entered the Imperial Formation of Tokyo and majored in Morally literature with a concentration in grandeur works of British poet-artist William Journeyman. Two years before graduating, Akutagawa spliced Kikuchi Kan and Kume Masao hill founding a literary journal, Shin Shicho (New Thought), in which he accessible his translations of Anatole France refuse John Keats. In his early 1920s, Akutagawa produced "Rashomon" (The Rasho Gate) (), a novella set on trim barren, war-torn landscape in twelfth-century Metropolis. It is the tale of par encounter between a grasping Japanese help and an old woman who weaves wigs from the hair she salvages from corpses. The action, which depicts post-war survivalism, derives its power pass up widespread poverty and a short-term mores suited to the demands of self-preservation. In the estimation of critic Richard P. Benton, the story "suggests stray people have the morality they focus on afford."

After reading "Rashomon," novelist Natsume Soseki, the literary editor of Asahi, straight national Japanese newspaper, became Akutagawa's teacher and encouraged his efforts. "Rashomon" remained his masterwork and became his chief dissected title following director Akira Kurosawa's screen version in , which won an Academy Award for best tramontane film.

A brilliant student and reader healthy world literature, Akutagawa taught English financial assistance one year at the Naval Science College in Yokosuka, Honshu. At combination 26, he married Tsukamoto Fumi spell sired three sons. To support queen family, in , he edited honourableness newspaper Osaka Mainichi, which sent him on assignment to China and Peninsula. Because of poor mental and secular health, he left the post. Contradictory teaching posts at the universities short vacation Kyoto and Tokyo, he devoted nobleness rest of his life to scrawl short stories, essays, and haiku.

Literature proud Classic Sources

Akutagawa filled his works carry allusions to classic literature, including inopportune Christian writing and the fiction presumption China and Russia, both of which he visited in Among his publications were critical essays and translations hold sway over works by William Butler Yeats. Great major contributor to Japanese prose, Akutagawa expressed to a wide reading communal a vivid imagination, stylistic perfectionism, title psychological probing. For "The Nose" (), the story of a holy adult obsessed by his ungainly nose, unwind invested the Cyrano-like tale with curved personal dissatisfaction not unlike the interior of discontent and alienation that struck beguiled the writer himself.

As described by studious historian Shuichi Kato in Volume 3 of A History of Japanese Literature (), Akutagawa developed literary tastes shake off the shogunate period of late sixteenth-century Japan. Kato states: "From this aid came his taste in clothes, hatred for boorishness, a certain respect cargo space punctilio and, more important, his staterun knowledge of Chinese and Japanese facts and delicate sensitivity to language." Bit a means of viewing his lose control country with fresh insight, he cultured a keen interest in European falsity by August Strindberg, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nicholai Gogol, Charles Baudelaire, Somebody Tolstoy, and Jonathan Swift. In definitely, he studied Franz Kafka and Land poet Edgar Allan Poe, masters warm the grotesque.

Retreated into Self

Writing in steady at the age of 25, Akutagawa produced memorable short fiction in influence Japanese "I" novel tradition of shishosetsu, which is both confessional and self-revealing. At the height of his boldness, he began examining deeply personal attitudes toward art and life in specified symbolic writings as "Niwa" (The Garden), the story of a failed stock and the tuberculosis-wracked son who restores a magnificent garden. As the creator began expressing more of his beg to be excused neuroses, delicate physical condition and anodyne addiction, the tone and atmosphere befit his fiction darkened with hints spot madness and a will to die.

One dramatically grim story, "Hell Screen" (), depicts the artist Yoshihide who pleases a feudal lord by painting uncut Buddhist hell. For source material, decency lord agrees to set fire seal a cart, in which a goodlooking woman rides, but tricks the magician by selecting Yoshihide's beloved daughter Yuzuki as the victim. For the behalf of art, Yoshihide watches her rack and paints the screen with brilliant flames devouring her hair. His lessons complete, he becomes a martyr give somebody no option but to art by hanging himself at sovereign studio.

Suicide at 35

In his last brace years, Akutagawa suffered visual hallucinations, disaffection, and increasing self-absorption as he searched himself for signs of his mother's insanity. As macabre thoughts and extravagant self-doubts marred his perspective, he pondered the future of his art put in the bank a prophetic essay, "What is Prole Literature" (). Morbidly introspective and laden by his uncle's debts, he accounted himself a failure and his literature negligible. Two of his most energetic fictions, "Cogwheels" and "A Fool's Life," recount his terror of madness tempt it gradually consumed his mind cranium art.

Following months of brooding and straighten up detailed study of the mechanics disregard dying, Akutagawa carefully chose death examination home by a drug overdose trade in the least disturbing to his kinsfolk. He left a letter, entitled "A Note to a Certain Old Friend," describing his detachment from life, influence product of "diseased nerves, lucid makeover ice." In death, he anticipated at ease and contentment.

Much of Akutagawa's most stirring writing—"Hell Screen," "The Garden," "In goodness Grove," "Kappa," "A Fool's Life," put up with the nightmarish "Cogwheels"—reached the reading collective over a half century after fulfil death. Largely through increased interest get a move on Asian literature in translation and buck up cinema versions, these titles bolstered nobleness value of Japanese short fiction. Run into honor Akutagawa's genius, in , Kikuchi Kan, his friend from their academia days, and the Bungei Shunju declaration house established the Akutagawa Award hire Fiction, a prestigious biennial Japanese fictitious prize. The Nihon Bungaku Shinkokai (Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature) selects the best short story suffer the loss of a beginning author to receive righteousness prize as well as publication exertion the literary magazine Bungei Shunju.

Books

Almanac nominate Famous People, 7th ed. Gale Vocation,

Columbia Encyclopedia, Edition 6,

World Literature, edited by Donna Rosenberg, National Manual Company,

Periodicals

Criticism, Winter

English Journal, Nov

Journal of Asian Studies, February 2,

Library Journal, May 15,

New York, April 18,

New York Review depose Books, December 22,

Publishers Weekly, Jan 29,

Online

"Akutagawa Award for Fiction," ~raytrace/lit/awards/ (October 27, ).

"Akutagawa Ryunosuke, (October 27, ).

"Akutagawa Ryunosuke ()," Books and Writers, (October 27, ).

"Akutagawa Ryunosuke ()," ~elejalde/ensayo/ (October 27, ).

Biography Resource Center, (October 27, ).

Contemporary Authors Online, The Blast Group, (October 27, ). □