The work of Akutagawa Ryunosuke is rightfully included in the golden fund of world literature. The mysterious biography of the Japanese classic and his frighteningly attractive stories still bother the imagination of millions of readers. The themes of fear and death pursued the writer all his life, right up to the tragic outcome in 1927.
Childhood and youth
The future great writer was born in Tokyo, March 1, 1892, in the early hours of the Dragon Day of the Dragon Day of the Month of the Dragon, which is why he was called Ryunosuke (the meaning hieroglyph “ryu” translates as “dragon”). Ryunosuke was only 9 months old when his mother went crazy and committed suicide in a psychiatric clinic. The baby was given to the upbringing of the mother’s childless family. It was an intelligent family, where ancient cultural traditions were carefully observed, and medieval art was valued above all, which subsequently had a huge impact on the writer's work.
The illness and terrible death of his mother for life remained an unhealing wound for Akutagawa. More than anything, he was afraid for himself of the same fate.
In 1910, Akutagawa graduated from the school among the best students and entered college, in the department of English literature. Three years later, he was already studying at the Faculty of Philology at Imperial University in Tokyo, where, together with new friends, future writers Kume Masao, Kikuchi Hiroshi and Yamamoto Yuji, he published the Shinshite literary magazine. It was on the pages of this magazine that Akutagawa printed his first stories.
Creative career
In 1915, Akutagawa, suffering from unhappy love, with his head went into the enchanting and mysterious world of medieval Japan, trying to forget about reality. The result was the stories "The Gate of Rasemon" and "Flour of Hell, " which instantly made the young writer popular. The story "Nose", written under the influence of Gogol, whom Akutagawa greatly appreciated, like all Russian classical literature as a whole, reinforces success. After graduating from university, Akutagawa took up the position of teacher of English. The writer hated this work, but he worked as a teacher for 9 months, during which he wrote 20 short stories, 20 collections of aphorisms and many essays.
In 1919, Akutagawa got a job as a correspondent for the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, after which he set off on a mission to China for four long months, which became a painful ordeal for a writer suffering from insomnia and nervous disorders. Returning to his homeland, he published his famous masterpiece "In more often", after which he finally changed his style to a more concise, simple and clear. Thirty years later, based on the story, the famous director Akira Kurosawa made the film "Rasemon", which received an Oscar and was included in the golden fund of world cinema.
After leaving the post of correspondent, Akutagawa devoted himself entirely to creativity. In total, he wrote more than 150 stories and several stories. The most famous story is “In the Land of Water”, in this striking and unusual work Akutagawa satirically depicted Japanese society of those years in which ominous signs of militant militarism were increasingly manifested.
On July 24, 1927, Akutagawa took a lethal dose of Veronal. The reason for his suicide is still not reliably known.
