Word: akutagawa
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RASHOMON (119 pp.) - Ryunosuke Akutagawa-Liveright...
...satirist, bile is almost as necessary as ink. Some, like Dean Swift, swim in it; others, like John Marquand, barely wet their prose in it; a few end by drowning in it. Japan's Ryunosuke Akutagawa was one of the hapless few; in 1927, sunk in pessimism and possibly near madness, he took an overdose of veronal and died. He was only 35, but the more than 100 short stories he wrote have since established him as Japan's most corrosive modern satirist...
Last year. U.S. filmgoers made his acquaintance in the sardonic and powerful Japanese movie. Rashomon. Filmed with stylized elegance and thrumming with barbaric force, Rashomon nonetheless softened Akutagawa's savage original, In a Grove, with a benign ending. Readers with hardy digestions can now compare the two and sample five other Akutagawa short stories of lesser scope, all of which combine a bitter misanthropy with a craft that is as spare and durable as bamboo...
Would you allow me to invite your readers' attention to one fact which you omitted to point out? The film Rashomon is based on stories written by that Akutagawa...
...very happy to see that the Japanese writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa was given full credit in TIME, Aug. 25, 1947. Your Jan. 7 issue again pleases me greatly with the fair treatise on the Japanese film Rashomon...