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About the Author
Ryunosuke Akutagawa was born in Tokyo on March 1, 1892. After finishing
the course of the First High School in 1913, he studied English literature
at the Tokyo Imperial University, from which he graduated in 1916. His
thesis was a study of William Norris. In the same year he wrote and
published three short stories, The Nose, The Imo-gruel, and
The Handkerchief, which brought him immediate fame. In 1918, he
married Humi Tsukamoto, and in the following year he published his third
and perhaps most important collection of short stories under the title
of The Puppet-player. He was now a leading figure in the literary
scene in Japan and maintained this position for the rest of his life,
which he cut short on July 24, 1927, at Tabata, Tokyo, by taking a dose of
veronal.
Akutagawa was an artist in the true sense of the word. Most
introductions to his translated works note the perfect craftmanship
of some of his short stories that can hardly be appreciated except in
the language he used. Even still, though possibly mere shadows of the
original work, the translations are definitely worth reading.
Works Available in English
| Title |
Year |
| The Rashomon |
1915 |
| The Nose |
1916 |
| The Imo-gruel |
1916 |
| The Handkerchief |
1916 |
| The Inferno |
1918 |
| The Death of a Christian |
1918 |
| The Death of Basho |
1918 |
| The General |
1922 |
| In the Grove |
1922 |
| Otomi's Chastity |
1922 |
| From Yasukichi's Notebooks |
1923 |
| Travels in China |
1925 |
| The Biography of Daidoji |
1925 |
| The Death of Genkaku |
1927 |
| The Mirage |
1927 |
| Kappa |
1927 |
| The Man of the West |
1927 |
| The Cogwheel |
1927 |
| A Fool's Life |
1927 |
Ryunosuke Akutagawa books currently available
Links
overgrowing moss has buried it into oblivion
Biography, works, excerpts.
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