If you want to understand the Japanese soul and mentality, you need to read the short prose of Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Read slowly and thoughtfully, and reread again and again—catching hints and subtexts, and discovering hidden depths of meanings beneath the clean surface. This collection includes works from different years—novellas and completely short, typically Japanese laconic stories and miniatures, in which much more is implied (and, accordingly, read between the lines) than what’s written on the page. Serious and ironic, yet always elegant stylizations of medieval prose, in which Akutagawa still has no equal among Japanese writers; sad and ironic fairy tales and parables; and texts in a more Europeanized genre of psychological realism, consistently refracted by the author at a purely national angle…