Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (芥川竜之介, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke , March 1st 1892 - July 24th 1927) is a Japanese writer.

Biography

Akutagawa never wrote long Romance, the short news being its principal means of expression. During its short life, he wrote more than one hundred fifty news, among which In the thicket and Kappa . Akira Kurosawa carried out the film Rashōmon (1950), but which is not based on the history of Akutagawa.

Akutagawa was born with Tōkyō, wire of slag (Toshizoo Niihara). His/her mother (Fuku Niihara) was insane. This is why it was adopted and raised by his maternal uncle, of which it took family name. It started to write while entering to the imperial university of Tōkyō in 1913, where it studied the English Littérature. It provided then for its requirements by teaching the English and while taking part in a newspaper. It is at that time that it published news Rashōmon (1914), which enabled him to obtain the recognition and the encouragements of Natsume Sōseki, and started the Nose , which will be finished only a few years later. It is also at this period that it started to write Haiku under the pseudonym of Gaki .

Still student, it made his proposal for a marriage to a friend of childhood, Yayoi Yoshida, but its adoptive family did not approve this union. In 1916, it became engaged to Fumi Tsukamoto, to which it Maria two years later. They had three children, Hiroshi (1920), Takashi (1922) and Yasushi (1925).

In 1921, at the top of its popularity, Akutagawa stopped its career of writer to spend four months in China, as a to defer for the newspaper Osaka Mainichi Shinbun . The voyage was stressing and Akutagawa suffered from several diseases, from which it never went back. Little time afterwards, it published its most known news, In the thicket (1922), the account of the murder of an aristocrat by three different characters, of which the corpse itself, each one claiming paternity of the crime. This powerful news and baroque are the source of principal inspiration of film of Kurosawa.

Until the end of its life, he suffered from Hallucination S. In 1927, he brought itself with his life, with a friend of his Fumi wife, but failed. He finally committed suicide by cyanide ingestion the July 24th 1927, leaving behind him only two words Bonyaritoshita fuan (ぼんやりとした不安, meaning “vague concern”). In 1935, his/her old friend Kikuchi Kan created the Japanese literary prize most prestigious, the Prix Akutagawa, in its honor.

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