Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening
the file on a figure who is, well, he's heavy
artillery in Japanese literature. Oh, absolutely.
A giant. If you're a fan of Japanese culture
or cinema or just really good, really twisted
storytelling, you have almost certainly come
across his name or at the very least the prize
named after him. You must have. It's the single
most prestigious literary award in Japan. Winning
the Akutagawa Prize is, I mean, career -wise,
it's like winning the lottery and an Oscar on
the same day. Exactly. We were talking about
Ryunosuke Akutagawa, often called the father
of the Japanese short story. And for a lot of
people, I think the association starts and ends
with Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece film, Rashomon.
Which is a great entry point. Don't get me wrong.
It's a phenomenal film. Of course. But relying
on the movie to understand the man. is a little
bit of a trap. It helps, but it also, you know,
it hinders. Akutagawa was so much more than just
the source material for a classic black and white
movie. He was a complex, deeply troubled, and
I would say an incredibly modern figure. That
is exactly what we're going to unpack today.
We aren't just looking at his bibliography. We're
looking at a man who lived a short, very intense
life, died at just 35. He lived during the Taishu
period, which is this fascinating, chaotic era
of modernization in Japan right between the wars.
And he was absolutely obsessed with structure,
with art, with perfection. But underneath all
of that intellectual brilliance, he was haunted.
Haunted is exactly the right word. He wasn't
just sad or melancholy. He was terrified. He
famously described his state of mind in his final
years as being plagued by a, what was the phrase
again? A vague insecurity. That's it. A vague
insecurity. And that phrase, that feeling, is
going to be our North Star for this deep dive.
It really is the key to unlocking his psyche.
Our mission today is to understand how a man
who was terrified, literally terrified of inheriting
madness, used literature to try and build this
kind of fortress of logic and structure around
himself. Right. To keep the chaos out. He was
trying to make sense of a chaotic world and a
chaotic inner world through his pen. And the
tragedy is, at the end of the day, the pen might
not have been strong enough. So we've got a mountain
of sources here. We've got the biographical data,
critical analyses of his major works, details
on his relationships, his travel diaries, and
of course the tragic accounts of the end of his
life. We are going to sift through all of it
to see what made Akutagawa tick. And to do that,
we have to start at the very beginning. Because
for Akutagawa, his origin story isn't just, you
know, background noise. No. It is the source
of the trauma that defined him. OK, let's rewind.
March 1st, 1892. We're in the Kishibashi district
of Tokyo. And here's the first thing that surprised
me. And I honestly had to double check this in
the notes. His name wasn't originally Akutagawa.
No, it wasn't. He was born Ryunosuke Nihara.
He was the eldest son of a businessman named
Toshizu Nihara. And what did the family do? Because
when I think of 1892 Japan, I'm thinking, I don't
know, tea, silk, maybe pottery. I am not thinking
of this. They owned a milk production business.
A milk business? Yeah. In 1892. Get out of here.
It sounds bizarre now, but you have to remember
the context. This is the Meiji era. Japan is
modernizing at breakneck speed. Western influence
is just pouring in. Okay, so milk was a Western
thing. Exactly. Milk was seen as this exotic
Western health tonic. It was a brand new industry.
So being in the milk business meant his father
was an entrepreneur, a hustler, someone who was
riding that wave of modernization. See, this
is what I love. You picture this high -minded
literary genius, this master of the macabre and
the historical, and he starts out in a milk family.
It really grounds him in the reality of Meiji
era. Tokyo. It's gritty. It's commercial. It
does. But that reality is shattered very, very
quickly. And this is the crucial moment in his
early life. Shortly after Rinosek was born, we're
talking maybe seven or eight months and in, his
mother, Fuku, experienced a severe mental illness.
The sources just say mental illness, which is
a very broad term. But in the context of the
time and how it affected him, this was obviously
significant, right? This wasn't just about a
postpartum depression. Yeah. No, this was catastrophic
for the family structure. The records are a bit
murky on the exact diagnosis, as they often were
in the 19th century, but she became incapacitated.
She essentially lost her mind. Wow. And because
of her condition, she just couldn't care for
him. So the infant Rinosuke was removed from
that house, the milk house, and was adopted and
raised by his maternal uncle, Mikiaki Akutagawa.
And that's how he gets the surname. That's how
he gets the name we know him by today. So he's
removed from his biological father and mother,
and he's placed into the Akutagawa household.
What was that environment like? Was it similar
to the milk business? More entrepreneurs? Not
at all. It was night and day. And this is a major
shift in his trajectory. The Kutagawa lineage
was very, very different. They were part of the
warrior class, the samurai class. Although by
this time, the class system had been legally
abolished. But the culture would still be there.
The culture, the mindset, absolutely. Historically,
they had served the Tokugawa clan as Okuju. Okubzu.
Okay, I need you to unpack that term for me.
I looked it up and I saw translations like tea
server, which sounds a little, well, it sounds
like a waiter. Chuckles. It's a bit more prestigious
than a waiter at a diner. I would hope so. Think
of it more like the master of ceremonies for
the shogun's private quarters. Essentially, they
were the officials who managed the tea rooms
and served tea within the shogun's castle. Ah,
so it's a high culture role. Exactly. It sounds
like a service role. And it was. But it was a
role of incredible culture, ritual, and precision.
You had to be incredibly disciplined, educated
in aesthetics, and deeply cultured to hold that
position. So he goes from a merchant background
hustling milk to a household that is steeped
in tea ceremonies, art, and the remnants of that
old samurai discipline? Precisely. The Akutagawa
family loved art and literature. It was in their
blood. So young Ryunosuke was immersed in this
environment. He started reading classical Chinese
literature from a very young age. He was reading
the heavy hitters of his own time, Morigai, not
Sume Sushiki. He was just breathing in high culture.
He was a prodigy, frankly. But, and there is
always a but with him, we have to talk about
the shadow hanging over all this. He knew about
his biological mother, right? It wasn't some
kind of family secret. Oh, he knew. And this
is the psychological burden he carried every
single day of his life. He spent his entire life
terrified, I mean just petrified, that he would
inherit his mother's madness. That is such a
heavy weight for a kid to carry, just constantly
thinking, is today the day I lose my mind? Is
it in my blood? It shaped his entire worldview.
Critical analysis suggests that for Akutagawa,
the equation was very simple. If he went mad,
life would become meaningless. He equated rationality
and intellect. with existence itself. So his
mind was everything. Everything. So his drive
to create these perfect structured stories wasn't
just artistic ambition. It was a defense mechanism.
He was trying to prove to himself over and over
and over again that his mind was sound. It's
like he was building a wall against the chaos
using words. If he could structure a sentence
perfectly, then his mind must be working perfectly.
Precisely. The structure of the story was the
structure of his sanity. Let's look at his education,
then, because he was clearly a brilliant kid.
You don't read classical Chinese poetry at age
10 if you're, you know, slacking off. He was
incredibly smart. Yeah. In 1910, he entered the
first higher school. Now, for listeners who might
not know the Japanese education system of the
time, the first higher school was the elite of
the elite. It was the main feeder school for
the Imperial University. The Ivy League of its
day. Basically, you have to take these grueling
entrance exams to get in. And Akutagawa. He got
in without taking them. His middle school academic
record was just that good. He was exempted. That
is the ultimate teacher's pet flex, isn't it?
Oh, the test. I'll just skip it. Thanks. It just
shows his intellectual capacity. And it was there
at the first higher school that he met the people
who would define his generation. He formed friendships
with Kan Kikuchi, Mazao Kume, Yuzi Yamamoto,
and Suchibunme. And for those listening who might
not be deep into Japanese literary history, this
isn't just a random group of college buddies.
Oh, no. This is like a literary all -star team
in the making. A powerhouse. It absolutely is.
These men would go on to shape the entire Taisho
and Showa literary landscapes. Kankikuchi, in
particular, plays a massive role in Akutagawa's
legacy later on. He's the promoter, the organizer,
the guy who gets things done. But at this stage,
they are just young. Brilliant, ambitious students.
And then in 1913, Akutagawa heads to Tokyo Imperial
University, what we now call the University of
Tokyo, to study English literature. And this
is where things start to get real. He's not just
reading anymore. He's starting to write. He is.
He's doing it with that same group of friends.
In 1914, they decided to revive a literary journal
called Shinshichu. Which translates to what?
New currents of thought. New currents of thought.
That sounds very ambitious. What was their vibe?
What were they trying to say? Well, just look
at what they were publishing. They weren't just
writing about their own lives or, you know, local
gossip. They were publishing translations of
William Butler Yeats and Anatole France right
alongside their own original writing. So they
were looking outward. They were bringing the
world to Japan in a literary sense. Yes. And
this is a crucial point about Akutagawa. He believed
that literature should be universal. He wanted
to bridge that gap between Western culture and
Japanese culture. He didn't see them as incompatible.
He saw them as two halves of a whole. He wanted
to take the modernism of the West and fuse it
with the tradition of the East. So he's translating
Yeats, he's studying English lit, and he's starting
to pen his own stories. And this leads us to
1915 and the debut of a story that is now legendary,
Rashmon. He published Rashmon while he was still
a student. It appeared in a magazine called Tikoku
Bungaku, or Imperial Literature. Now, Rashmon
is a heavy story. It's set in this dilapidated
gate in Kyoto filled with corpses, with a servant
debating whether to become a thief just to survive.
It's grim. It's atmospheric. It is dark, atmospheric,
and psychologically complex. And it's based on
a 12th century tale from a collection called
the Kanjaku Monogatari -shu. So he's taking old
material and making it new. Right. Okutagawa
took this old piece of folklore, which was honestly
kind of dry, and he injected it with this modern
psychological realism. He made us care about
why the servant makes his choice, what goes on
in his head. So surely his friends, this literary
power team, they read it and said, Ryunosuke,
you're a genius. This is the future of literature.
You would think so. But actually. They criticized
it. What? It was not well received by his inner
circle. They didn't really get it immediately.
It wasn't an overnight sensation. That has to
be tough. You put your soul into this dark, moody
piece, and your best friends are like, eh, I
don't know about this one. It's a bit weird.
It was discouraging, for sure. They thought it
was too constructed, maybe a bit too artificial
compared to the popular style of the time. But
Akutagawa had guts. In December 1915, just a
month or so later, he gathered up his courage
and went to a literary circle meeting hosted
by his idol, the great Natsume Susaki. Okay,
we need to pause on Susaki. For the listener
who is Natsume Susi in the context of 1915 Japan.
Because I feel like famous writer doesn't quite
cover it. Famous writer is a massive understatement.
He is the sun around which the entire literary
world orbits. He's the author of I Am A Cat.
Bachin, Kokoro. He's the most respected, most
influential intellectual in the country. To get
his approval was everything. It was like getting
a nod from the emperor of literature. So Okutagawa,
still just a student, walks into the lion's den.
He starts attending these weekly meetings known
as the Thursday Club. And in early 1916, he publishes
another story called The Nose Hana. The nose.
I love this story. It's about a high -ranking
Buddhist priest with a ridiculously long, dangling
nose who's obsessed with shrinking it because
he's so vain. It's hilarious, but also kind of
sad. It's a brilliant satire on vanity and obsession.
And Shitake read it. And he didn't just read
it. He wrote a Putagawa, a letter of praise.
That's the golden ticket. That's everything.
Shitake basically said, this is excellent. If
you can write 20 or 30 more stories like this,
you will be a unique presence in the literary
world. That stamp of approval changed everything.
It secured Akutagawa's fame. He wasn't just a
student anymore. He was Siseki's anointed successor,
in a way. And this brings us to his style. We
mentioned earlier that he was translating Yitz
and France, but the Nos and Rashmon are set in
the distant past. Why was he looking backward
to move forward? Why not just write about 1916
Tokyo? This is where we get into the literary
battleground of the time. The dominant trend
in Japan then was something called naturalism.
Naturalism. Define that for us. Because in my
head, that sounds like writing about trees and
rivers, but I know that's not it. No, not nature
like trees. Naturalism was about portraying life
exactly as it is. Often gritty, often focused
on the mundane, the ugly, the everyday. But unvarnished
truth. Right. It was supposed to be real. And
it was often very autobiographical, the iNovel
or Shishetsu genre, where the author just writes
about their own life. You know, I woke up, I
felt sad, I looked at a wall. And Akutagawa hated
that. He was not a fan. He was an anti -naturalist.
He didn't want to just document the boring details
of his daily life. He thought art required artifice,
structure. He wanted to use historical settings,
the Heian period, the Edo period, the early Meiji
period, as a stage. Why, though? What did that
give him? By distancing the story from the now.
He could explore universal psychological truths
without getting bogged down in the specific social
issues of 1916 or his own laundry list of problems.
So he uses the past as a mirror for the modern
mind. It's safer in a way. You can talk about
corruption or vanity more freely if you dress
it up in a kimono from 500 years ago. Exactly.
He reinterpreted these classical works with modern
sensibilities. He wasn't just retelling old myths.
He was rewriting them to expose the modern anxieties
underneath. Words like Gesaku Zanmai, absorbed
in letters, and Jigoku Hen, hell screen, are
perfect examples of this. Hell screen is another
massive one. That's the one about the painter,
right? The obsessive painter. Yeah, Yoshihide.
The greatest painter in the land, but a man with
a very twisted personality. He is ordered by
a powerful lord to paint a screen depicting Buddhist
hell. But Yoshihide has a problem. He can only
paint what he sees. He's a supreme realist in
his own way. So he can't just imagine hell. He
needs a reference model. Right. So he starts
torturing his apprentices. He unleashes snakes
on them. He chains them up just to see their
faces contort in fear so he can paint it. Talk
about a toxic workplace environment. It gets
so much worse. The climax involves a carriage.
He asks the Lord to burn a carriage so he can
paint the flames of hell. The Lord agrees, but
in a really cruel twist, he puts Yoshi Hide's
own daughter inside the burning carriage. No.
And Yoshi had watches. He watches. At first,
he is horrified. But then, as the flames rise
and his daughter dies, his expression changes
to one of ecstasy. He's captivated by the beauty
of the flames, the color of the burning. He sacrifices
his humanity for his art. That's deeply disturbing
stuff. But it's also about that obsession with
art, right? The idea that art is more important
than life itself. Or that art requires the sacrifice
of humanity. which, given Akutagawa's own obsession
with his craft, feels like a very personal exploration.
Was he afraid that he was becoming Yoshihide?
Was he sacrificing his own life, his own sanity,
to create these perfect stories? I want to pivot
to the themes in his work, because you mentioned
Hellscreen and the sacrifice. But there is another
recurring theme that the sources highlight, and
it's a bit, well, it's a bit controversial, the
role of women. This is a critical part of understanding
Akutagawa. And to understand his female characters,
we have to look at the women who raised him.
We have the three mothers, essentially. Yafuku,
the biological mother. Who represents the fear
of madness. She is the source of his existential
dread. Even though he was removed from her care
at eight months old, she loomed large in his
imagination. She was the ghost in the machine.
Then there's the aunt who raised him, Fuki. Yes,
Fuki. She played the most prominent role in his
day -to -day life. And the sources describe her
as controlling. She was unmarried, and she poured
all her energy and attention into Rinuske. She
demanded a lot from him, especially as she got
older. She was a dominating force in his domestic
life. So you have a distant, terrifying mother
figure and a present, controlling mother figure.
How does that translate to the page? Not well,
to be honest. The women in Akutagawa's stories
are often portrayed as dominating, aggressive,
deceitful, or selfish. There's a definite streak
of, well, misogyny in his work that we can't
ignore. That is a harsh assessment but the text
backs it up. It does. But if you look closely
the men are often the victims of these women.
It's a reflection of his own feelings of being
trapped or controlled. It's not necessarily a
fair reflection of reality but it is a very accurate
reflection of his internal landscape. He felt
suffocated by the expectations and the emotional
demands of the women in his life. It's fascinating
how his personal life just bleeds into the ink
like that. Speaking of bleeding let's talk about
a fight. A literary fight. The dispute with Junichi
Tanizaki. Oh, this was the heavyweight title
match of Taichu's literature. Tanizaki versus
Akutagawa. Tanizaki, for listeners, is another
giant. He wrote The Makioka Sisters in Praise
of Shadows. Very different style. Very, very
different. Yeah. Tanizaki was all about aesthetics,
shadows, sensuality. Akutagawa was about intellect,
irony, structure. and their debate was public.
It was essentially a debate about the soul of
the novel. The core argument was structure versus
lyricism. Okay, break that down. Who was on which
side? Akutagawa was team structure. He argued
that the structure of the story, how it is built,
the architecture of the plot, was more important
than the content or the plot itself. He wanted
a story to be a finely crafted object. He famously
said that a story without a proper structure
is not art. Which makes perfect sense for a guy
trying to keep chaos at bay. He wants a blueprint.
He needs it. Exactly. Tanizaki took the opposite
view. He argued for lyricism. He thought the
most important thing was the flow, the emotion,
the beauty of the prose, even if the plot was
a bit loose. He argued that a story could be
interesting purely based on its atmosphere. He
thought structure was mechanical and artificial.
So Akutagawa wants a blueprint, and Tanizaki
wants a vibe. That's a good way to put it. And
again, this aligns perfectly with Akutagawa's
psychology. A mind... Trying to order a chaotic
world will always cling to structure. If the
structure fails, the story fails. And for Okutagawa,
if the structure fails, the mind fails. He needed
that control. Tanizaki, who was perhaps a bit
more psychologically robust, was comfortable
letting things flow. It's high stakes for him.
Now, we can't talk about structure without talking
about the story that messes with structure the
most. The story that gave us the term the Rashomon
effect. We're talking about In a Grove or Yabunonaka.
This is arguably his masterpiece of structural
experimentation. It was published in 1922. And
just to clarify for everyone, because this is
the most common misconception, Kurosawa's movie
Rashomon is actually based on this story, In
a Grove. Correct. The movie takes the... title
and the framing device you know the gate the
rain the conversation from akutagawa story rashomon
but the actual plot the murder mystery the trial
the conflicting testimonies that comes entirely
from in a grove so what happens in in a grove
why is it so revolutionary well the premise is
simple a samurai has been murdered his body is
found in a bamboo grove And we get a series of
testimonies given to a police commissioner. We
hear from a woodcutter who found the body, a
monk who saw him earlier, the police agent who
caught the bandit. Okay, standard police procedural
stuff so far. Right. But then we hear from the
bandit himself, Taj Umaru. And he admits to killing
the samurai. She says it was a glorious duel.
He tied up the samurai, seduced the wife in front
of him, and then fought the samurai fairly and
won. Case closed. He confessed. Not so fast.
Next, we hear from the samurai's wife. And she
says she killed him. She says that after the
bandit raped her and left, her husband looked
at her with such coldness and loathing that she
couldn't bear it. She killed him to save her
honor and then tried to kill herself but failed.
Okay, that's a problem. Two killers confessing.
And then finally, through a medium, we hear from
the ghost of the dead samurai himself. And he
says he committed suicide. I'm kidding. Not at
all. He says his wife agreed to go with the bandit
and asked the bandit to kill him. The bandit
was so shocked by her cruelty that he let the
samurai choose his own fate. The samurai, heartbroken,
took his own life. And here's the kicker. There
is no detective. There is no Sherlock Holmes
who walks in at the end and says, Elementary,
my dear Watson, the bandit is lying because of
the mud on his boots. That is the genius of it.
Akutagawa leaves it completely unresolved. There
is no solution. Why? What was he trying to do
with that? He was challenging the very concept
of objective truth. he was showing that truth
is relative to the observer everyone is the hero
or at least the tragic victim of their own narrative
they are all lying or perhaps they are all telling
their own version of the truth but the objective
reality is lost forever In the Grove. It's so
modern. I mean, scroll through social media today
and you see In a Grove playing out every single
minute. Two people describe the same video and
see completely different things. It is timeless.
Yeah. And it became a standard trope in storytelling
because of him. But for Kutagawa, I think it
also reflects that vague insecurity again. If
you can't even trust the truth of a simple event,
what can you trust? If reality itself is subjective,
then how can you possibly find solid ground?
That is a chilling thought. It's not just a clever
puzzle. It's an existential crisis in story form.
Now, In a Grove was published in 1922. This is
right after a major event in his life that seems
to mark the beginning of the end, the trip to
China. The China trip of 1921, yes. Yeah. He
was sent as a reporter for the Osaka Manichi
Shinban. A reporter gig. Traveling to Nanjing,
Shanghai, Hangzhou. That sounds like a great
adventure. It was supposed to be. Akutagawa had
romanticized China his entire life. Yeah. Remember,
he grew up reading classical Chinese literature.
He had this vision of China as a land of poets
and sages, of Li Bai and Du Fu. In fact, before
he even left, he wrote a story called The Christ
of Nanjing, based purely on his imagination and
those old books. So he arrives in 1921 China
with this fantasy in his head. What does he find?
Reality. And reality was harsh. China in 1921
was in turmoil. It was the warlord era. It was
chaotic, dirty, politically unstable. The glorious
ancient culture he loved was either crumbling
or hidden behind a thick layer of poverty and
corruption. It must have been a massive shock
to the system, the ultimate expectation versus
reality. It broke him physically and mentally.
The trip was incredibly stressful. He suffered
from various illnesses while he was traveling,
pleurisy, insomnia, severe digestive issues.
He was hospitalized in Shanghai. And the sources
say he never really recovered from that, right?
No. His health took a permanent nosedive. He
returned to Japan exhausted, disillusioned, and
physically weak. This really marks the shift
toward his final, darker years. The vibrant,
historical storyteller starts to fade, and a
darker, more introspective writer begins to emerge.
Let's walk through that descent into darkness.
Because his writing changes, doesn't it? He moves
away from those polished historical tales like
Rashomon. He does. In his late career, the great
anti -naturalist starts doing something very
interesting. He starts writing about himself.
But it's not the boring daily life naturalism
he hated. It's a documentation of his own mental
deterioration. He starts mining his own diaries
for horror stories. Exactly. Works like Daidujishinsuke
no Hansei, early life of Daidujishinsuke, and
Tenkibo. Death register. Death register is particularly
poignant. It's a stark account of the deaths
in his family. He's confronting the mortality
and the madness head on. He's looking at his
family tree and seeing a graveyard. And the madness
was becoming more than just a fear at this point.
It was becoming a symptom. He wasn't just afraid
of going crazy. He was starting to see things.
Yes. He started experiencing visual hallucinations.
He saw doppelgangers. He reported seeing himself
walking down the street. He saw insects that
weren't there. The anxiety over inheriting his
mother's illness hit a fever pitch. He was convinced
the curse had finally activated. There's a story
from this period called Spinning Gears or Cog
Wheels, Hogaruma. Spinning Gears is one of the
most terrifying things he ever wrote because
it feels so real. It's fragmented. It's disjointed.
In the story, the protagonist is plagued by these
translucent spinning cog wheels that are constantly
blocking. Which is actually a symptom of migraines,
isn't it? A visual aura. And he also wrote Kappa
in 1927. Now, Kappa sounds like it should be
fun. Kappas are those little green water imps
from folklore. They eat cucumbers. They're kind
of cute. You'd think so. But Akutagawa's Kappa
is a biting, deeply cynical satire. A psychiatric
patient tells the story of how he fell into the
land of the Kappas. But the Kappa society is
just a twisted mirror of Japanese society. They
have absurd laws. They debate suicide. They talk
about capitalism and art. There is a part in
Kappa where a baby Kappa is about to be born.
And the father asks the baby, do you want to
be born? And the baby says, no, it looks awful
out there and decides not to be born. It's incredibly
dark humor. It's basically Gulliver's Travels,
but much, much darker. It shows that Akutagawa
was looking at the world, the legal system, the
family structure, capitalism, and just seeing
the absurdity and the pain of it all. He was
losing the will to participate in the game of
life. This brings us to 1927, the year everything
ends. He actually survived a suicide attempt
earlier in 1927. It involved a friend of his
wife. It was a messy situation, a double suicide
pact that didn't go through, but it signaled
that he was ready to go. He was planning it.
And then on July 24th, 1927. July 24th. It was
the rainy season. Hot, humid, oppressive. Akutagawa
was in his home in Tabata. He took an overdose
of veronal barbital. Where did he get it? It
was given to him by a doctor and poet named Mokichi
Saito. Okutagawa had been using sleeping pills
for his insomnia for a long time, so he had access.
But this was a calculated lethal dose. He read
the Bible, he read some scripture, and he went
to sleep. He was only 35 years old. 35. This
is just incredibly young. He left a wife and
three children. One of his sons, Yasushi Okutagawa,
actually went on to become a famous composer,
so the artistic gene survived. But he left something
else behind, too. A note. And this note has become
almost as famous as his stories. It's one of
the most famous suicide notes in history. The
suicide note was addressed to his old friend
from high school, Mazao Kume. And in it, he tries
to explain why. He says he doesn't have a specific
grievance. It's not about money or a scandal
or a debt. So what does he say it is? He uses
the phrase, A vague insecurity. A vague insecurity
about the future. That phrase chills me every
single time I hear it. It's not a sharp panic.
It's not, I'm afraid of the police or I'm in
debt. It's just this. This fog of dread. It encapsulates
the modern condition so perfectly. It's not the
fear of a tiger eating you. It's the fear of
existence itself. The fear of the unknown. The
fear that nothing really matters. Akutagawa,
standing on the edge of the modern era, looking
at the industrialization, the changing culture,
the political instability, he just felt this
overwhelming, undefined anxiety. He felt like
the ground was dissolving beneath his feet. And
he couldn't structure his way out of it anymore.
The fortress he built had failed. The walls he
built with his stories finally crumbled. The
logic just couldn't hold back the vague insecurity.
The immediate aftermath of his death must have
sent shockwaves through the literary world. It
was huge. It was seen as the end of an era, the
Taishu democracy was ending, the militarism of
the Shushu era was on the rise. Akutagawa's death
felt like a curtain closing on a certain kind
of intellectual life. I read that one of his
disciples was really affected. Yes, Katsuo Hori.
He wrote a story called The Holy Family in 1930
that was deeply influenced by Akutagawa's death.
Referencing him as a deceased mentor character,
it shows the impact he had on the younger generation.
And then his old friend, the one he met in school,
Kan Kikuchi, decided to ensure that Akutagawa's
name would never, ever be forgotten. Kan Kikuchi
was a doer. He was the organizer. And in 1935,
eight years after the suicide, he established
the Akutagawa Prize in memory of his friend.
And today that is the prize. It's given to promising
new writers. If you win the Akutagawa Prize in
Japan, your career is made. It's a beautiful
tribute, using his name to launch the next generation
of storytellers. It ensures that his name is
spoken with reverence every single year. And
his stories are still being adapted. We have
the Kurosawa film, obviously. But the sources
mention ballet. opera. Yes, the complexity of
his work lends itself to other forms. There's
a ballet by Victoria Puleva called Gagaku, based
on Hellscreen, an opera by Mayako Kubo called
Rashomon. His work is just so visually and psychologically
rich. And even recently, in 2020, NHK produced
a film called A Stranger in Shanghai about his
time as a reporter in China. Starring Rui Himatsuda.
It shows that we are still fascinated by that
pivotal moment where his world started to crack.
We want to understand why he broke. So let's
try to synthesize all of this. We have a boy
from a milk business who becomes a samurai of
literature. He masters the art of the short story.
He battles the ghost of his mother's madness
his whole life. He creates these masterpieces
like Rashomon and In a Grove. And he dies of
a vague insecurity. What is the final takeaway
here? I think the takeaway is about the fragility
of order. Akutagawa was a genius of structure.
He could take a messy, chaotic event and turn
it into a perfect, jewel -like story. He tried
to impose order on the world through his art.
He thought if he could just write the perfect
sentence, he could save himself. But the world
is messy. And the mind is messy. Exactly. The
tragedy is that he tried to structure the world,
but he couldn't structure his own peace of mind.
He was fighting a battle against his own biology
and his own sensitivity that, in the end, he
just couldn't win. But in fighting that battle,
he left us some of those profound investigations
into truth and human nature that had ever been
written. He looked into the abyss and he took
notes for us. It's a haunting reminder that sometimes
the most beautiful art comes from the deepest
pain. Absolutely. And I want to leave the listener
with this thought. We live in a world now that
is arguably more chaotic than 1927 ever was.
We have information overload, deep fakes, conflicting
narratives on the news every single day. In a
grove is basically our daily reality. We never
know who is telling the truth. That's very true.
The relativity of truth is our new normal. So
when Akutagawa talked about a vain security about
the future, I wonder, does that resonate more
with us now than it did even back then? Are we
all feeling a little bit of that? That is a question
worth pondering. Yeah. I think we are all looking
for a structure to hold on to in one way or another.
If you haven't read In a Grove or if you haven't
watched Kurosawa's Rashomon in a while, do it
this week. But do it with this context in mind.
Think about the man writing it, trying to find
the truth in a world that wouldn't give him any.
It changes the experience completely. Thanks
for diving deep with us today. We'll see you
on the next one.