Born in Tokyo in 1892, Akutagawa Ryunosuke killed himself in 1927, at the age of thirty-five, with an overdose of pills. He suffered from various illnesses, including neurasthenia. Despite his pains and short life, he produced some one hundred and forty titles, most of them tales, a couple of novellas (including the famous Rashomon, 1915, later turned into the celebrated film by Kurosawa) but no novel. Ryunosuke’s mother died insane when he was a child. He was given up for adoption by an uncle, whose surname he took. He graduated in 1916 as a student of literature at the Tokyo Imperial University. Married two years later, he fathered three sons and taught English to support his family. Later he travelled to China and Russia. 
    His works are “a masterful reinterpretation of Asian tradition and legend, marked by a profound infusion of Western thought and literary technique” (kalin.lm.com).

► Blackmask offers another text by Akutagawa, ‘The spider’s web’