Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

These purple sparks...he would trade his life for the chance to hold them in his hands Akutagawa (1892-1927) was one of Japan's foremost stylists - a modernist master whose stories are marked by original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humour. Rashōmon and In a Bamboo Grove inspired Kurosawa's magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is inverted, while tales such as the Nose and Loyalty paint a richly imaginative picture of medieval Japan peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. Later works such as Death Register, The Life of a Stupid Man and Spinning Gears draw on Akutagawa's own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely moving impressionistic stories.