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 This is a superb translation that will surely play its part in placing Ryunosuke Akutagawa where he belongs, alongside such modernist masters of short fiction as Kafka, Cortazar and Robert Walser. But - as I intimate above - don’t expect much slapstick or many belly laughs.
Reviewed by Paul Kane
Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories
by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Penguin Books, March 2006, 320 pages, paperback, ISBN: 0140449701
In an introductory note to these eighteen stories the translator, Jay Rubin, expresses his hope that the Akutagawa presented in this book will be “funnier, more shocking, and more imaginative than he has been perceived to be until now in the English-speaking world.” The last two of these hopes have, in my view, been fulfilled. But as for “funnier”; well, that is more open to doubt. There are very few belly laughs in Akutagawa’s fictional world.
Perhaps the story that comes closest to raising a laugh is “Horse Legs”, although the humour here is rather cold and callous. A man dies, but by mistake, for the two angelic sentinels that preside over his fate have made a clerical error. In death the man’s legs have deteriorated, and so a horse’s legs – the only ones available at such short notice - are speedily grafted onto his hips. When he is later resurrected he finds that his ordeal has by no means ended, for his legs have an errant spirit that he is unable to rein in. There are distinct Kafkaesque touches to this dark fantasy and - as also with many of Kafka’s tales - we are here invited to laugh at but not with the protagonist.
One of Akutagawa’s great achievements lay in his adaptation of the traditional Japanese medieval tale, with perhaps the two most famous examples being the title story and “In a Bamboo Grove”: these are the stories that formed the basis for “Rashomon” the film, made by Kurosawa in 1950.
“Rashomon” is a slight tale, but it is nonetheless interesting for the psychological complexity with which Akutagawa invests the main character. Kyoto is in ruins, a city wracked by earthquake and plagued by famine, and a servant, fearful and uncertain of his future, takes shelter for the night. A disturbance leads him to an old woman who is plucking the hair from a corpse to make a wig and, out of this encounter with death, the servant gradually arrives at an understanding that he is alive and free. The breakdown of social order, he realizes, is a good thing: from now on he will act amorally and without regard for consequence.
Confusingly perhaps, it is “In a Bamboo Grove” that contributed most to the plot of Kurosawa’s 1950 film. The story tells of a rape and a killing (perhaps murder, perhaps suicide or accident) and is told from multiple points of view. In this, it is rather like Robert Browning’s great poem, The Ring and the Book. Interestingly, there is little dispute about how the rape took place, but confusion and contradictory accounts as to who carried out the killing and why. Many claim responsibility for the fatal deed, including even the dead man: speaking through a medium, he gets to tell his side. This is a story for connoisseurs of the “unreliable narrator” and related devices.
In later life Akutagawa turned to writing “I-fiction”, that is fiction that was mainly autobiographical in nature. This was very much the vogue in Japan at the time – in the 1920s – but he was nonetheless still able to use it to express his own preoccupations. One of the most moving of these stories, “Death Register”, presents accounts of the deaths of three family members that were close to him: his mother, father and a younger sister. He explores his relationship to them, the significance of their lives and the legacy that they have left him. This story ends with a haiku by Joso which carries the same import as Pascal’s comment about how fragile we are, how small the distance is that separates us from the dead.
The most impressive story in the book is undoubtedly “Spinning Gears”, and this too was a late foray into “I-fiction” by Akutagawa. It was one of the last things he wrote and was published posthumously in 1927, the same year that he committed suicide at the age of 35. “Spinning Gears” is a compelling portrait of a man in turmoil; of someone who, as he almost says, finds it easy to believe in evil but is unable to believe in God. The story’s title refers to the protagonist’s ability to see connections everywhere. Continually, he encounters premonitions and coincidences that seem to be signs of an impending doom. As the premonitory signs mount and accumulate, the man’s sense of paranoia and persecution, of being hunted, increases. Trapped and despairing, he at last realizes that there is only one escape from himself.
It is all too easy to see in this story, with its harrowing climax, a too-personal portrait of Akutagawa himself. Here art does not give distance, but rather palpably dreadful truth: “Politics, business, art, science: all seemed just a mottled layer of enamel covering over this life in all its horror.” (p.216)
As well as the stories, Haruki Murakami contributes a substantial introduction (about 20 pages) in which he traces Akutagawa’s development as a writer. He also explores more generally the predicament of the Japanese writer when confronted with the West and (post)modernity.
This is a superb translation that will surely play its part in placing Ryunosuke Akutagawa where he belongs, alongside such modernist masters of short fiction as Kafka, Cortazar and Robert Walser. But - as I intimate above - don’t expect much slapstick or many belly laughs!
About the reviewer: Paul Kane lives and works in Manchester, England. He welcomes responses to his reviews and can be contacted at pkane853@yahoo.co.uk
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