Ryunosuke Akutagawa is known as one of the "Big Three" of Japanese literature and has had a profound impact on the development of modern Japanese literature. It took the author 42 years to read Akutagawa's works at different stages of his life, from being puzzled to experiencing the spirit of Rashomon, to having a systematic understanding of Akutagawa's works, and then to ......
It took forty-two years to understand Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Text |Riko Motoyama.
This article was published in the second issue of Essays in 2023.
The first time I read Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "Rashomon" was 42 years ago, in 1980, when I was a junior at Xiamen University, my foreign teacher Hideo Mori taught us a Japanese literature class, using the original Japanese book "In the Bamboo Forest" (藪中).
According to Mr. Hideo Mori, he knew that the name "Rashomon" was actually the name of another short story published by Ryunosuke Akutagawa in February 1914 (then 22 years old, a sophomore), in 1950, the famous Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa put "In the Bamboo Forest" on the screen, and changed the title of the film to "Rashomon" (the following "In the Bamboo Forest" uses the name "Rashomon" to avoid confusion). History proves that the two ** "Zhang Guan Li Dai" of Akutagawa Ryunosuke are the ingenuity of the Oriental genius Akira Kurosawa, and since then, the world has given birth to the new term "Rashomon", and people call the case of "Rashomon" as "Rashomon".
Rashomon movie poster.
To tell you the truth, the first time I read Rashomon, on the one hand, I couldn't understand such a classic at the level of Japanese at the time, and on the other hand, the literature and movies I used to be exposed to were all "black and white" values, so when I read it as a story at the time, I didn't understand the essence of "Rashomon" at all, and I even felt a little disgusted.
The second time I read Rashomon was in 1986, the third year of studying at the Graduate School of Linguistics at Waseda University in Japan. Literature professor Okada teacher taught originally, he didn't explain it himself, and assigned us to preview before the end of the previous class, so that we could choose a role from the three main parties - samurai Takehiro Kanazawa, his wife Masa, and thief Tashomaru, and the next class will be a virtual small theater, and the students will take turns reading aloud, that is, let us devote ourselves to the plot and play a party. The teacher specially explained that during the preview, it is necessary to figure out the psychology of the witnesses in the story, in order to achieve the effect of painting sound and color during the recitation.
It's nerve-wracking. During the preview, I noticed that there were a total of seven witnesses in this short **, and there was not a single identical testimony, nor a single righteous accusation, let alone a character who established himself as a clear character, and even the three main parties "exposed" that the murderer was himself. The samurai used his soul possession to say that he was humiliated in front of his wife, and was betrayed by his wife, and he was shameless and committed suicide; The thief, known as Tokumasa, fought a duel with the samurai for twenty-three rounds and killed him; And Masa said that after she was defiled, she couldn't stand her husband's cold eyes, killed her husband, and wanted to die but couldn't.
Rashomon movie stills – three main characters.
Interestingly, it was really difficult for me to choose which character to read aloud because I couldn't choose, and I didn't like every role. Why not? To put it bluntly, it is because every character in "Rashomon" points directly to the evil of human nature, so sharp, so dirty, and so naked, that is, it invisibly highlights the evil that exists in the background of each of us's human nature, so we will subconsciously resist.
People, the more realistic they are, the more they dare not touch it, and as a result, none of the students chose to be the role of real sand, and in the end, the teacher did not force it, and the teacher himself became real sand.
I still remember that the two boys and the teacher who first raised their hands to read aloud seemed to be possessed by the soul of the character, and changed their usual gentle expressions and became "fierce", which shows the strength of Akutagawa's literature, which can reach the depths of people's hearts, and can actually make stage amateurs infiltrate the characters in ** into their own reading, and even enrich their expressions.
This literature class experience made me realize that Ryunosuke Akutagawa's masterpiece "Rashomon" is still unique compared to the masterpieces of several modern Japanese writers, such as Kazuha Higuchi's "Thirteen Nights", Ozaki Momiji's "Golden Yaksha", Natsume Soseki's "I Am a Cat", Tanizaki Junichiro's "Harukin Copy", and Mori Ouwai's "Dancing Queen". Unlike Mori Ouwai and Natsume Soseki, who studied in the West, he blended traditional Japanese culture with modern Western European literature to build his own literary world of "harmony with the soul and foreign talents"; Akutagawa Ryunosuke had only a short life span of thirty-five years, and he had not yet had time to go abroad, which made his literature hold relatively pure traditional Japanese values.
In the literary world of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, there are no heroes and no bears; There is no black, and there is no white. Ryunosuke Akutagawa used his gray brain cells to depict the most realistic color in the world, gray, subverting the routine of literary works at that time. We know that "Sherlock Holmes" is a classic of the world's detectives, and the stories of Sherlock Holmes reasonably satisfy readers' curiosity and plot anxiety, and each story has a twisty but convincing ending, that is, no matter how cleverly disguised, they are dug up in the end and are duly punished. However, in Akutagawa Ryunosuke's "Rashomon", the three parties actually said that ** is himself and not someone else. In this way, detectives can deduce three "truths" when they reason about events, and each truth can be justified and reasonable. In the story of Sherlock Holmes, there is only one truth; In "Rashomon"**, there are three "truths" from different positions, which makes readers fall into deep thinking: Is there any truth? Is your reasoning wrong?
It is not difficult to see that Ryunosuke Akutagawa was first and foremost a great thinker and innovator before he became a writer.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa does not only expose the evil of human nature, he also admires the beauty of human goodness. His short story ** "Ah Fu's Chastity" can be said to be a masterpiece in this regard.
Although Afu's Chastity is extremely short, it condenses the complexity and goodness of human nature in Japanese culture, and brilliantly presents the bright light in the gray area of Akutagawa Ryunosuke.
Afu's Chastity" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
* Starting from a beggar sneaking into the empty nest when there was chaos on the eve of the war, the beggar who was hiding from the rain was talking to the lonely little flower cat in the empty nest, and suddenly a beautiful girl ran in the rain, it turned out to be the housemaid Ah Fu, who came back to find the little flower cat that the owner forgot to take away. The beggar faced a girl who was drenched in heavy rain and revealed her youth, and suddenly changed from a pitiful beggar to a **, trying to deal with Ah Fu**. At this time, what is presented to the reader is that in the dark empty nest, the little flower cat, Ah Fu, and the beggar observe each other. Readers are worried about the next scene, and expect that the little flower cat will witness an ugly world. The beggar pointed a gun at Little Flower Cat and used Little Flower Cat as a threat, asking the girl Ah Fu to choose one of two harsh options: sacrifice Little Flower Cat or spare Little Flower Cat and sacrifice her own chastity.
At this time, not only the beggars, but also the readers were shocked that Ah Fu chose to sacrifice his chastity. Between the life of a small animal and the chastity as precious as life in that era, Ah Fu chose to sacrifice himself, and even untied his clothes and lay down on the tatami mat. This is already unthinkable. However, Akutagawa Ryunosuke's "Rashomon Spirit" further subverts the expectations of Afu and his readers—* changed his course, not only letting go of Little Flower Cat, but also letting go of Afu, without touching a finger of Afu.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa leaves the reader with a mystery: is it Afu who touches the beggar in this story, or does the beggar move Afu?
At this time, the rain stopped, and in the empty nest that gradually brightened, the innocent little flower cat looked at Ah Fu and the beggar without discrimination with her beautiful big green eyes, as always. This allegorical stroke has stayed in my heart for a long time. Here the reader is liberated from the plot of the story, and experiences the thrill of lost and regained and conscience discovered.
Just when the reader is still unsatisfied, Ryunosuke Akutagawa spends only a few lines describing the unexpected encounter between Afu and his former beggars in the crowd at the opening ceremony of the expo twenty-two years later. Holding the child in his hand, Ah Fu followed the husband of the watch shop owner, and the former beggar, wrapped in a solemn official uniform, sat in the luxurious carriage of the tall horse. For a moment, the eyes of the two met each other, and they showed an invisible smile to each other, and suddenly passed away.
Perhaps on that rainy night twenty-two years ago, they unexpectedly sublimated themselves through self-purification and walked on the bright road respectively. Ryunosuke Akutagawa's ** tells readers that there is no standard answer to anything in the world, and naturally every reader has their own interpretation of Afu and the former beggars.
As a brilliant writer, Ryunosuke Akutagawa's success lies in his constant challenge to the reader's IQ and emotional intelligence, allowing the reader to experience the unexpected and ponder. His thinking is not influenced by the world, and he shows the diversity and complexity of human nature, as well as the inclusiveness and diversity of Japanese culture.
The third time I read Ryunosuke Akutagawa was when I wanted to make writing a "career" for the rest of my life after 20 years of writing, and I read the main masterpieces of Akutagawa Ryunosuke's life and saw things that I couldn't see before.
I found that Ryunosuke Wasagawa's short but prolific career as a writer differed greatly in Chinese style and style.
Although Ryunosuke Wasagawa's writing career was not long, from 1912 when he was twenty years old to write ** "Old Age" (published in 1914) to 1927 Chinese New Year's Eve at the age of 5 "A Dumb Life" and the essay "People in the West", a total of 15 years, but he is a prolific writer, and ** alone published 150 articles. His writing can be divided into three types of styles.
The People of the West" book shadow by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
The first type belongs to the "ancient for the present" type, which is good at using stories such as Japan's "Tales of the Past and the Present" and China's "Strange Tales from Liao Zhai", substituting their own thinking and language, and profoundly exposing the darkness of human nature, and his representative works are "Rashomon" and "Spider's Silk". Lu Xun once spoke highly of it: "Taking the facts of ancient times and injecting them into new life will have something to do with modern life." ”
Ryunosuke Akutagawa's literary language of "the past is used for the present" sweeps away the inherent verbosity, ambiguity, and redundancy of Japanese, presenting concise, sensitive, poignant, tragic, and elegant, although the sentences are short, the meaning is far-reaching, and unique. The use of Chinese characters is not uncommon in China, Japan, and South Korea, such as the Chinese writer Wang Zengqi, who also rewrote "Two Lights" in "Strange Tales from Liao Zhai", and the North Korean writer Kim Wan-joong's "Dream of Nine Clouds" is derived from Sima Xiangru's "Zixu Fu".
The second genre, which can be said to be the essence of Akutagawa Ryunosuke's pure literary creation, presents the idea of the supremacy of art, and his representative work is "Hell Change". Personally, I think Akutagawa's 1918 Hell Changes is similar to Kafka's 1922 The Hunger Artist, which depicts the pursuit of the sublime art first. The protagonists are all for their own artistic creations, at the cost of their lives. In particular, in order to complete his dream screen painting "Hell Change", the protagonist of Akutagawa's "Hell Change", Yoshihide did not hesitate to use his beloved daughter as a model, and painted the painful struggle of his daughter on the ox cart into the screen. In order to pursue the highest state of art, he abandoned worldly family affection and humanity. Of course, ** caused a controversy between praise and criticism in Japanese society, but from the perspective of literary history, it is probably difficult to have such a ghostly pure literature**.
Hell Changes" stage play poster.
The third type is the private ** created by Akutagawa Ryunosuke in the later period, and his representative works include "Kappa", "Gear", and "The Life of a Dumb". Ryunosuke Akutagawa was fostered in his uncle's house when he was a child, because his mother had a mental illness, and the maternal love he experienced since he was a child was different from ordinary people, and he had a complex psychology of both suspicion and attachment to women; He became famous at a young age, and he had a kind of elegant, mysterious atmosphere that Japanese women especially liked, so after he became famous, he continued to have sexual encounters, and even gave birth to a child with a married woman. For this reason, Akutagawa wrote his bitterness, shame, and hesitation into his private ** and poured out his own situation.
The Life of a Dumb Person" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
In particular, Akutagawa Ryunosuke wrote the private ** "The Life of a Dumb" on the eve of his suicide, almost confiding in his emotions before committing suicide, different from the previous style of writing sharp and suspenseful Japanese story style, but with fifty-one short stories in order to write down the dreamlike scenery of his life: from curled up in the arms of a mother with mental illness, to marriage, childbirth, women's issues, whether he can't escape the gene of mental illness sooner or later, and finally the suicide of his brother-in-law, in order to pay off his brother-in-law's debts, Life is a chicken feather. In the end, the title of the fifty-first article is called "Defeat", as if implying that he will go with the wind, leaving his legacy to the road of no return.
Among them, what shocked the literary world is the following typical private ** realism:
The madman's daughter smoked a cigarette and said to him charmingly, "Isn't that child very much like you?" ”
According to research, Akutagawa's "daughter of a madman" is Mrs. Hideshigeko, a married woman. In 1921, Mrs. Hideshigeko gave birth to a baby boy who looked very much like Akutagawa, which distressed Akutagawa and did not know what to do.
Mrs. Hideshigeko.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa used the last breath of his life to leave a private ** legacy like a will and a confession for the world. Although Japan's private ** has long been widely discussed in 1907 by Tayama Hanabukuro with "Quilt" as the first creation, but the young, handsome, and promising Akutagawa Ryunosuke's later private ** strongly impacted young Japanese writers, the most representative is Osamu Dazai, who is intoxicated with Akutagawa Ryunosuke.
Osamu Dazai followed Ryunosuke Akutagawa and reached his peak in the private ** field, and even the final suicide was regarded as a suspicion that he went to Huangquan with his idol Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Whether Osamu Dazai's suicide followed Ryunosuke Akutagawa, we can't draw conclusions, but in the field of Japanese private **, it can be said that Tayama is the originator, Akutagawa promotes development, and Dazai reaches the peak, so that Japan's private ** occupies an unshakable position in the world literary circle.
The famous literary critic Yukito Tsugaya once mentioned Ryunosuke Akutagawa and "private **" in "The Origin of Modern Japanese Literature", he said
What is important is not that Akutagawa Ryunosuke is sensitive to the trends of Japanese literature after the First World War, nor is it that he consciously creates such "private" works, but what is important is that Akutagawa combines the trends of Western Europe with Japan's "private works" and makes such "private works" meaningful as a form that goes to the forefront of the world.