Rashomon and Other Stories - (Tuttle Classics) by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><b>Clear-eyed glimpses of human behavior in the extremities of poverty, stupidity, greed, vanity... Story-telling of an unconventional sort, with most of the substance beneath the shining, enameled surface. --<i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b> <p/> Widely acknowledged as the father of the Japanese short story, Ryunosuke Akutagawa remains one of the most influential Japanese writers of all time. <i>Rashomon and Other Stories</i>, a collection of his most celebrated work, resonates as strongly today as when it first published a century ago. <p/><b> This volume includes: </b> <ul><li> <i>In a Grove</i>: An iconic, contradictory tale of the murder of a samurai in a forest near Kyoto told through three varying accounts</li><li> <i>Rashomon</i>: A masterless samurai contemplates following a life of crime as he encounters an old woman at the old Rashomon gate outside Kyoto</li><li> <i>Yam Gruel</i>: A low-ranking court official laments his position all the while yearning for his favorite, yet humble, dish</li><li> <i>The Martyr</i>: Set in Japan's Christian missionary era, a young boy is excommunicated for fathering an illegitimate child, but not all is as it seems</li><li> <i>Kesa and Morito: </i> An adulterous couple plots to kill the woman's husband as the situation threatens to spin out of control</li><li> <i>The Dragon</i>: A priest concocts a prank involving a dragon, but the tall tale begins to take on a life of its own</li></ul> With a new foreward by noted Akutagawa scholar Seiji Lippit, this updated version of a classic collection is a an excellent, readable introduction to Japanese literature.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>Clear-eyed glimpses of human behavior in the extremities of poverty, stupidity, greed, vanity ... Story-telling of an unconventional sort, with most of the substance beneath the shining, enameled surface. --<b><i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br><br>There are enough Swiftian touches in Akutagawa to show his hatred of stupidity, greed, hypocrisy and the rising jingoism of the day. But Akutagawa's artistic integrity kept him from joining his contemporaries in the easy social criticism or naive introspection ... What he did was question the values of his society, dramatize the complexities of human psychology, and study, with a Zen taste for paradox, the precarious balance of illusion and reality. --<b>Howard Hibbett, from the Introduction to <i>Rashomon and Other Stories</i></b><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><b>Ryunosuke Akutagawa</b> was the author of over 100 short stories. Described as one of the best-read men of his generation, he received a degree in English Literature at Tokyo Imperial University and published translations of Anatole France and W.B. Yeats. In 1927, Ryunosuke Akutagawa committed suicide at the age of thirty-five. <p/>New Foreword by: <br><b>Seiji M. Lippit</b> is Professor of Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of <i>Topographies of Japanese Modernism</i> and the editor of <i>The Essential Akutagawa</i>. He has written widely on 20th century Japanese literature and translated numerous works of fiction and criticism. <p/>Translated by: <br><b>Howard Hibbett</b> is Professor Emeritus of Japanese literature at Harvard University where he was Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies from 1985 to 1988. His publications include many translations and works on Japanese language and literature.
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