The work of the outstanding Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa is one of the brightest and most unusual phenomena in 20th-century world literature. The main theme of his works, written with refined taste and humor, is the endless universe of the spirit and the mysteries of human psychology. For the material for his stories, Akutagawa drew from historical chronicles, medieval anecdotes, and collections of ancient legends. Akutagawa believed that only through the exceptional and unexpected could one reveal the true movements of the soul. A fanciful interweaving of fiction and reality, the depth of psychological analysis, the paradoxical nature of his judgments, and gentle irony make Akutagawa’s works genuine masterpieces.
Translation from Japanese by Tsuru (Emil Erkulayev, Aleksei Fadiev, Adelina Khairullova, Mariya Divenko, Vyacheslav Kontaurov, Oleg Korshikov)