A review by nickdleblanc
Rashomon: And Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

3.0

I picked this one up because I love Akira Kurosawa’s films. I knew that he had used “In a Grove” as the basis for his film “Rashomon” while interpolating some of the title story as well. Akutagawa’s work is not dissimilar from the short stories you might expect to find in a high school literature textbook. None of them have particularly deep character development but they all have some big underlying idea lurking just below the surface. The grossly named “Yam Gruel” describes the phenomenon of “petit objet a” that Lacan would go to write about later, “The Dragon” explores the psychology of belief within large groups like you might find in religion or today’s right-wing idiot fascination with QAnon, and the title story (which would make a fantastic stage adaptation) explores the choices we make to survive and how they influence the path of our life. This collection would be a great gift for a well-read middle school aged kid. Many of these stories are clearly derived from old Japanese folk tales. It’s fascinating because as Americans we are so far removed from their cultural reference points—save for bastardized American versions of them like Western films—that when we hear these stories they feel familiar (because we too have a folk tradition that has a similar literary vibe) but what they are about and how they play out is entirely foreign to us. Like in “The Dragon” they are referencing Buddhist legends which are well known in Japan but alien to those of us who are ignorant to the history. It’s a pity I’m only getting to Japanese literature now in my 30s. If I were a Lit teacher, I’d certainly use some Akutagawa.
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tl;dr—Good short stories for those of us who used to read ahead in the lit textbooks during English class, or anyone who has ever watched Kurosawa and craves a deeper understanding