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A review by lucasmiller
Rashomon and Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
5.0
Wanted to take a star off for the thinness of the collection, but I think the works in this slim volume make up for the barebones nature of it. Akutagawa seems like a writer who is hard to get to know due to the public domain nature of his work and the outsized fame of two of the hundreds of stories he wrote.
The world of these stories is dark. People either mean, hapless, or stupid. It is a world that even in only a few short stories feels ancient. The headnotes of a couple of these stories mention that the author is rewriting old stories from chronicles of the time Heian Period. I can't tell if this is true or part of the fiction of the stories. I think that is part of Akutagawa's achievement as a writer. Tricky stuff.
The world of these stories is dark. People either mean, hapless, or stupid. It is a world that even in only a few short stories feels ancient. The headnotes of a couple of these stories mention that the author is rewriting old stories from chronicles of the time Heian Period. I can't tell if this is true or part of the fiction of the stories. I think that is part of Akutagawa's achievement as a writer. Tricky stuff.