Kappa

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Maarten Liebregts (Translator)

In Kappa vertelt de in een instelling opgenomen Patiënt Nr. 23 hoe hij op een zekere dag tijdens een wandeltocht in Kamikochi een Kappa zag: een kikkerachtig wezen uit de Japanse folklore. Hij beschrijft dat hij besluit dit mythische wezen te volgen en dan, net zoals in Alice in Wonderland, door een gat valt: de menselijke wereld uit en het rijk van de Kappa’s in. Eenmaal daar leert hij de kappa’s kennen en ontdekt hij hoe zij op bizarre maar herkenbare wijze omgaan met ethiek, kunst, economie en het leven zelf. Veel van de vooroordelen die de mens over dit mythische wezen heeft, blijken niet te kloppen. Kappa is een briljante parabel waarin Akutagawa onze maatschappij en de menselijke natuur onder een vergrootglas legt. Met scherpzinnige humor en filosofische ondertonen schetst hij een portret van een samenleving die even tragisch als komisch is. Kappa verscheen voor het eerst in 1927 en wordt vaak bestempeld als de eerste dystopie uit de Japanse literatuur. Ook wordt het werk vaak naast iconische werken als Dagboek van een gek van Nikolaj Gogol en Erewhon van Samuel Butler geplaatst.

96 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2025

About the author

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (芥川 龍之介) was one of the first prewar Japanese writers to achieve a wide foreign readership, partly because of his technical virtuosity, partly because his work seemed to represent imaginative fiction as opposed to the mundane accounts of the I-novelists of the time, partly because of his brilliant joining of traditional material to a modern sensibility, and partly because of film director Kurosawa Akira's masterful adaptation of two of his short stories for the screen.

Akutagawa was born in the Kyōbashi district Tokyo as the eldest son of a dairy operator named Shinbara Toshizō and his wife Fuku. He was named "Ryūnosuke" ("Dragon Offshoot") because he was born in the Year of the Dragon, in the Month of the Dragon, on the Day of the Dragon, and at the Hour of the Dragon (8 a.m.). Seven months after Akutagawa's birth, his mother went insane and he was adopted by her older brother, taking the Akutagawa family name. Despite the shadow this experience cast over Akutagawa's life, he benefited from the traditional literary atmosphere of his uncle's home, located in what had been the "downtown" section of Edo.

At school Akutagawa was an outstanding student, excelling in the Chinese classics. He entered the First High School in 1910, striking up relationships with such classmates as Kikuchi Kan, Kume Masao, Yamamoto Yūzō, and Tsuchiya Bunmei. Immersing himself in Western literature, he increasingly came to look for meaning in art rather than in life. In 1913, he entered Tokyo Imperial University, majoring in English literature. The next year, Akutagawa and his former high school friends revived the journal Shinshichō (New Currents of Thought), publishing translations of William Butler Yeats and Anatole France along with original works of their own. Akutagawa published the story Rashōmon in the magazine Teikoku bungaku (Imperial Literature) in 1915. The story, which went largely unnoticed, grew out of the egoism Akutagawa confronted after experiencing disappointment in love. The same year, Akutagawa started going to the meetings held every Thursday at the house of Natsume Sōseki, and thereafter considered himself Sōseki's disciple.

The lapsed Shinshichō was revived yet again in 1916, and Sōseki lavished praise on Akutagawa's story Hana (The Nose) when it appeared in the first issue of that magazine. After graduating from Tokyo University, Akutagawa earned a reputation as a highly skilled stylist whose stories reinterpreted classical works and historical incidents from a distinctly modern standpoint. His overriding themes became the ugliness of human egoism and the value of art, themes that received expression in a number of brilliant, tightly organized short stories conventionally categorized as Edo-mono (stories set in the Edo period), ōchō-mono (stories set in the Heian period), Kirishitan-mono (stories dealing with premodern Christians in Japan), and kaika-mono (stories of the early Meiji period). The Edo-mono include Gesaku zanmai (A Life Devoted to Gesaku, 1917) and Kareno-shō (Gleanings from a Withered Field, 1918); the ōchō-mono are perhaps best represented by Jigoku hen (Hell Screen, 1918); the Kirishitan-mono include Hokōnin no shi (The Death of a Christian, 1918), and kaika-mono include Butōkai(The Ball, 1920).

Akutagawa married Tsukamoto Fumiko in 1918 and the following year left his post as English instructor at the naval academy in Yokosuka, becoming an employee of the Mainichi Shinbun. This period was a productive one, as has already been noted, and the success of stories like Mikan (Mandarin Oranges, 1919) and Aki (Autumn, 1920) prompted him to turn his attention increasingly to modern materials. This, along with the introspection occasioned by growing health and nervous problems, resulted in a series of autobiographically-based stories known as Yasukichi-mono, after the name of the main character. Works such as Daidōji Shinsuke no hansei(The Early Life of

Reviews

[Roebi Heinst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bijzonder mooi vertaald, leest als een trein en behoudt toch de klassieke 'feel' van het tijdsbeeld. Ook mooi hoe het al dan niet subtiel commentaar levert op de Japanse maatschappij. Zeer gevat en ludiek voor zijn tijd!