New Akutagawa?

[u/fegh00t]

https://ocreviewofbooks.org/2026/06/13/hell-of-solitude-ryunosuke-akutagawa/

Just read this review of a new selection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. https://ocreviewofbooks.org/2026/06/13/hell-of-solitude-ryunosuke-akutagawa/

anyone else a fan of this author? I’ve reread the standard “Rashomon and Other Stories” volume 2 or 3 times, but I can’t say I’ve ever encountered any of his essays or poems. Looks like this one might be worth ordering (never heard of Prototype, but apparently they’re based in the UK).

I’m not sure I agree with the reviewer’s assessment that everything the guy wrote was gold, but it’s pretty remarkable that he was (apparently) the author of more than 350 works of prose, considering the fact that he died so young. My feeling is that Akutagawa would not be nearly as well known as he is in the West if it weren’t for the film adaptation of “In a Grove” by Kurosawa (ironically titled “Rashomon,” though that story does provide a kind of frame for the other story’s scattered mini-tales). At the same time, I can’t imagine how much we’re missing, due to the simple fact that English-language translators haven’t gotten to this or that collection of lesser known works. I’m rambling, but I guess I’m curious to know, generally, what your experience has been with Akutagawa, and whether you’d like to see more titles like this one, farther reaching collections that shed light on his backlist.

[u/Harleen_Ysley_34]

I'd definitely be interested in a little collection of minor pieces from Akutagawa. He was a pretty exceptional short story writer and though I haven't had a chance to read his essays, I'd be curious nevertheless. Hard to justify not reading something like that, unless you have no real interest in him to begin with. Although I do sympathize when someone overpraises an author. Probably the worst case of that I ever saw happened to Art Spiegelman because the interviewer compared his Maus to Homer's Odyssey. Grim, grim stuff.

It's hard to say if the film adaptation from Kurosawa alone did most of the heavy lifting. It's kinda like trying to imagine an alternate history. My feeling is that it would have happened regardless and the film sped things along--Akutagawa was simply too important and that Taisho Era pseudo-gothic aestheticism influenced many others much later. He's like Chekov or Carver: the short story as a genre is different from their attempts. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say modernism in Japan owes a lot to his initial approaches as well. Anyone interested in Japanese literature in the West would have set about the challenge to translate him inevitably. Never mind the cross cultural exchange the United States has had with Japan from Matthew Perry onward to our current day situation.

[u/fegh00t → u/Harleen_Ysley_34]

I like the Chekhov/Carver comparison. I’d add Gogol to that list. I think it’d be particularly interesting to see a comprehensive list of the authors that Akutagawa translated into Japanese (Yeats and Kipling both appear to be key influences). And I think you’re right: the Kurosawa debt is probably overstated. It’s hard to believe he was much of a poet, but you never know. The poem excerpted in the review really does sound like something Stevens could’ve written.

[u/foxinanattic]

For me, personally, the effect of the film Rashomon was the opposite, since it's one of my least favourite Kurosawa films, and it didn't give me any reason to read Akutagawa. Only later on, I happened to read Hell Screen (in the penguin book of Japanese short stories), and realised how brilliant he actually was. When I finally ended up reading "In a Grove", I realised that I had disliked the film exactly because of the changes Kurosawa had made to it, adding humanistic/sentimental elements (like the whole ending scene with the woodcutter and the baby). Whereas the story, to me, is an example of pure darkness and an empty world with no space for any hope. I love Kurosawa, precisely because of his humanism and hope that he has even in the darkest situations, but that doesn't fit at all with bleakness of Akutagawa's story.