All About Japan

Short-story writer, poet, and essayist, one of the first Japanese modernists translated into English. Akutagawa published no full-length novel. He was a stylistic perfectionist, who often favored macabre themes. His short stories 'In a Grove' and 'Rashomon' inspired Akira Kurosawa 's classic film from 1950. In 1935, the writer's friend Kikuchi Kan established the Akutagawa Prize, which is generally considered among the most prestigious Japanese literary awards for aspiring writers. "Yes, sir. Certainly, it was I who found the body. This morning, as usual, I went to cut my daily quota of cedars, when I found the body in a grove in a hollow in the mountains. The exact location? About 150 meters off the Yamashina stage road. It's an out-of-the-way grove of bamboo and cedars." (from Rashomon and Other Stories , tr. by M. Kuwata, Takashi Kojima) Akutagawa Ryonosuke was born in Tokyo into a family which had lived for generations in the shitamachi d...