Rereading Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's Un

DOI IR (HANDLE) Web Site Open Access

Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • 芥川龍之介『運』を読み直す
  • アクタガワ　リュウノスケ　ウン　ヲ　ヨミ　ナオス
  • アクタガワ リュウノスケ 『 ウン 』 オ ヨミナオス

Search this article

Description

Very little research has been conducted to interpret Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s political opinions from his early works. This paper attempts to interpret Akutagawa’s anti-war stance from his novel Un(Luck). At the time when Akutagawa was writing the novel, Bergson’s philosophy was distorted in Japan. Writers of naturalistic literature stated their pro-war opinions, sometimes by referring to Bergson’s distorted philosophy. Akutagawa’s Un(Luck) is deemed to criticise such opinions. This paper focuses on how the Japanese word goriyaku (literally meaning ‘blessings’) is never used in the novel and how the novelist included in the plot a story told by an old man about a woman who made a wish to the Goddess of Kannon at Kiyomizu-dera Temple and ended up killing a nun. The paper also points out that the ‘recession’, ‘Kiyomizu-dera Temple’ and ‘message from the Goddess in a dream’ described in the novel evoke the Russo-Japanese War and WWI. It then concludes that Un(Luck) can be interpreted as a work that expresses the novelist’s rejection of the opinion that a country may wage war if it is in its own interests through the words and attitude of the old man in the novel.

Journal

  • 日本語・日本文化

    日本語・日本文化 50 79-98, 2023-03-10

    The Center for Japanese Language and Culture, Osaka University

Keywords

Details 詳細情報について

Report a problem

Back to top