On the train to teach an art-residency program to first and second graders in a NYC public school, I immersed myself in Akutagawa’s world as translated by Jay Rubin for Penguin Classics, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa: Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories. As the pages turned, the residency sessions decreased. I finished the book the same week of the last class. In this way Akutagawa has merged with my past and my future.
He died at thirty-five: killed himself. This information is available in the book’s introduction which I’ve just begun to read––unless one is reading for tedious things like school essays, it’s often better to only read introductions after finishing a book. So I was a little surprised. Not that he killed himself but that he could produce such timeless work at so young an age. One may argue that his world compared to mine was better at producing timelessness: it experienced things slower, wrote letters, didn’t have to fight electronic pollution and addiction and had easier access to free-thinking. Of course, his world had it’s fair share of issues but applauded self-discipline and responsibility. My world, as great as it is, eats laissez-faire all day long––snack, breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, snack, dinner, snack, midnight snack. O_o
Here are some three thoughts that seeped to the surface while reading the introduction to his work: A) To make a living doing what one loves and find it torture is . . .!? B). To attain recognition and believe it a fluke because even you are ignorant of the source of your genius––a thing you cannot manipulate is. . .?! C) Everyone hails your genius but you know it is you who is at its mercy. Is that horror?!
I will go ahead and abruptly end here with the following lines from one of his short stories, “The Writer’s Craft:”
It was Lieutenant Honda’s sister. Half hidden beneath the swirls of an old-fashioned hairdo, the lovely young girl pressed her face into a silk handkerchief. The brother, too, so stolid-looking a moment ago, was now sniffling and fighting back his tears. The father quietly blew his nose in one tissue after another. Yasukichi’s first reaction to this scene was one one of surprise. Then came the satisfaction of the playwright who has succeeded in wringing tears from his audience. But in the end he felt an emotion of far greater magnitude: a bitter self-reproach, a sense of wrongdoing for which there could be no penitence. All unkowing, he had tramped with muddy feet into the sacred recesses of the human heart. Yasukichi hung his head for the first time in the hour-long course of the funeral. (169-70)
