Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

I recently read Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories, a collection of short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, translated by Jay Rubin. Akutagawa is one of Japan's most celebrated writers, but, for most of us in the west, he's most notable for "In a Grove" and "Rashomon," which provided the plot and name, respectively, for one of Akira Kurosawa's best-known movies. I'd be lying if I said that his connection to Kurosawa had nothing to do with my decision to check this book out, but I don't want to imply that Akutagawa is little more than a cinematic footnote: his short stories are some of the best I have ever read.

While enjoying this book, I often thought about the language barrier. When you're watching a foreign movie, the picture is, for the most part, unaltered, so much of the artistry (the lighting, set design, costumes, and cinematography, for example) is preserved. Words are different; you can't really see a writer's words through translation because the translator's prose cloaks them. This is not a bad thing, of course, but it is always at the back of my mind while reading foreign-language authors. Translated literature is (except for authors who translate their own work, such as Samuel Beckett) a collaboration. It's why I credited Jay Rubin in my first paragraph: this book belongs to him as well as to Akutagawa.

These are unique stories, and Rubin's style perfectly captures the tone of each one. I don't know if it's just my imagination, but a lot of translations feel like translations; English dialogue or prose that was translated from Japanese or French or any other language somehow feels different from English that was English to begin with. But that's one of the advantages: I like it when a translation gives me a glimpse of the original language's beauty, and Rubin's does so here.

I was already familiar with some of these stories. I knew the premise of "In a Grove," in which several witnesses give conflicting accounts of a murder, from watching the movie Rashomon. I had read "The Spider's Thread," a story about a robber whose one good dead in life provides him with a chance to escape from Hell after death, a few years ago. However, most of these stories are new to me. There are several, mostly from earlier in Akutagawa's career, that I want to mention. "The Nose," which is the story that first brought Akutagawa his fame, is a comedy about a priest who fixates on his appearance. "Dragon: the Old Potter's Tale" is about a monk whose prank spreads farther than he had imagined. "The Story of a Head That Fell Off" has a title that sums up the story as aptly as any other, and "Horse Legs" has a title that only touches the surface of a story that few would attempt and fewer still could master.

But of the new-to-me stories in this collection, my favourite is "Hell Screen," which is about the pain people will endure or afflict to achieve perfection. The central character is a genius painter and problematic artist named Yoshihide, and his objective is to paint Hell. Yoshihide is a perfectionist who insists on only painting what he can see, and goes to horrifying lengths for the sake of his craft.

Looking over this list of my favourites, I notice some patterns. Most of these are comedic. Most of them are fantasies. Most of them exaggerate human foibles. There are other, very different, very good stories in this book, but these are the ones that stuck with me.

That's the fun thing about a short story collection: you always get a nice mix. Whether it's a multi-author compilation or a single-author's voice, there's something wonderful about a book that gives you a bunch of read-in-one-sitting stories. Some will stick out to you more than others, but, with luck on your part and skill on the authors', you'll enjoy them all.