Short Fiction: Akutagawa Ryūnosuke

This is a Boundary Bay Classics edition of the classic short story collection Short Fiction: Akutagawa Ryūnosuke by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. The collection gathers thirteen stories, including “Rashōmon,” the tale that inspired Akira Kurosawa’s celebrated 1950 film of the same name, alongside twelve further stories drawing on classical Japanese and Chinese sources — court tales, Buddhist parables, and historical anecdote. Reworked by Akutagawa with a modern, often unsettling psychological edge, the stories probe greed, vanity, cruelty, and the thin line between civilization and savagery. Written between 1915 and 1920, they established Akutagawa as one of the defining voices of early twentieth-century Japanese literature and the writer widely regarded as the father of the modern Japanese short story.