Product Description
Fiction. Asian Studies. Translated from the Japanese by Anthony Barnett and Toraiwa Naoko. Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927) is one of 20th Japan's great storytellers. He is best known in the West for the story "Rashomon", "Rasho Gate", which, with another of his short stories as primary source, "Within a Grove", was the inspiration behind Kurosawa's film Rashomon. Akutagawa read widely in world literature. He graduated from Tokyo University with a thesis on William Morris. His mentor was the great novelistNatsume Soseki, who had lived in London at the turn of the century. Akutagawa's writings include reworkings of motifs and tales of China's and Japan's past, modern fables, essays, and a few autobiographical fictions which, like A FOOL'S LIFE, follow his intense engagement and difficulty with the world. He ended his brief life the month after completing A FOOL'S LIFE. Anthony Barnett is a poet and music historian. His books include the collected The Resting Bell (1987) and selected Miscanthus (2005). He wrote a Masters on the Theory and Practice of Literary Translation at University of Essex in 1978. Hewas visiting scholar at the Center for International Programs, Meiji University, Tokyo in 2002. His other translations include Albiach, O. Berg, Delahaye, Giroux, Lagerkvist, Vesaas, Zanzotto. His writing is most recently surveyed in Ian Brinton's volume Contemporary British Poetry: Poetry Since 1990. Dr Toraiwa naoko is Professor of English at Meiji University. She received her doctorate from University of Sussex and divides her time between Japan and England. ... Read more

Product Description
74 pp ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Hell Screen ("Jigoku Hen")
This is an amazing book - Ryunoske Akutagawa was probably one of the most talented but under rated authors of the whole talented bunch. Again, like most of the Japanese traslations (with exception of Mishima, Kawabata, Oe) - this is poor translation (I would rather use the term inadequate or less than sufficient). If we are aware of the culture then we can see the canvas much more clearly and understand how vivid it is. I found a fantastic first edition where the drawings are just amazing. To many of the western people the stories may look like folklores but believe me there is more to it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Worthwhile as an Early, Well-Done Anthology for This Author, and for a Few Stories Not Found Elsewhere
This book was published in 1930 in Tokyo, in English, and contained 11 short stories. It appeared just three years after Akutagawa's death and must be the earliest English-language anthology of his works. The translator, Glenn W. Shaw (1886-1961), was an American educator who spent much of his working life in Japan and knew the author. In his introduction, he said he'd published a translation of "Rashomon" in a Japanese magazine in 1920, only five years after the story was written.

It was interesting to compare this collection with later anthologies for this author. Of the pieces contained here, four are among the best known today and have been retranslated often by later anthologists ("Rashomon," "The Nose," "The Handkerchief," "The Spider's Thread"). Two others have been retranslated once or twice ("The Badger," "The Ball"). As far as could be determined, the others are available only in versions by Shaw ("Lice," "The Wine Worm," "Tobacco and the Devil," "The Pipe," "Mori Sensei").

Written between 1915 and 1920, the works were all from Akutagawa's early, most successful period. Like "Rashomon," most were set in the various eras of Japanese history. Others took place in the present/near present and were based on real people, with the author not included in the story. Only one, "Mori Sensei," was set in contemporary times, told from the point of view of a stand-in for the author, though it wasn't directly autobiographical.

Of the less well-known stories, "Mori Sensei" was particularly enjoyed. In few works by this author has a sense of compassion for others come through so directly, as with Chekhov. In it, the narrator described an old, mediocre middle-school teacher, who was hired temporarily but couldn't communicate his subject and was disrespected by all. In middle school, the narrator too scorned him. Later, after entering the adult world, he saw the teacher again and could understand and sympathize.

Another good story was "Lice," a comic tale set just before the Meiji Period. It began with two ships of soldiers sailing from a harbor with flags flying, looking gallant and glorious, then zoomed in on the sordid realities on board. The escalating disputes between the men on how best to treat lice were compared subtly to disputes between philosophical schools of thought, and taken no less seriously.

Also good was "The Wine Worm," set in China, in which a healthy landowner underwent a medical cure for a problem that a priest claimed was afflicting him. It described well the patient's physical sensations and at the end presented the author's humorous, ironic commentary about what had happened.

Shaw's version of a better-known tale, "The Handkerchief," brought out most clearly, I thought, the disdain the author felt for the habitual conceptualizing of the intellectual it depicted.

In my opinion, Shaw's translations were clearly ahead of, say, translators like Kojima/McVittie and Sasaki and compared fairly well even with those of most other later anthologists. His style was nuanced, precise and neither florid nor free. It's mainly the title of his anthology that has dated. Akutagawa's tales might have seemed grotesque and curious in 1930. Some 80 years later, after writers like Kafka and Céline, the advent of magic realism and the meeting of east and west, they read like models of restraint.

Here's an excerpt:

"And until the bugle sounded for recess, our Mori Sensei, more confused than ever, went on trying desperately to translate poor Longfellow. Deep down in my ears still rings his shrill, almost choking, voice, as with the perspiration beading his sallow round face and his eyes constantly pleading for something unknown, he read, 'Life is real, life is earnest.' But the cry of millions of miserable human beings hidden in that shrill voice was too deep to stimulate our ear drums in those days. So there were many besides myself who even yawned brazenly aloud as we grew more and more weary during that hour. But Mori Sensei, holding his small body erect in front of the stove, and utterly oblivious of the flying snow coating the window panes, went on brandishing his reader incessantly and shouting desperately as if a spring in his head had suddenly unwound. 'Life is real, life is earnest! Life is real, life is earnest!'"

Of the 11 stories contained here, eight were republished in 1964 in Japan under another title by Shaw: Rashomon and Other Stories. "The Badger," "The Ball" and "Mori Sensei" were the three stories not reprinted. ... Read more