A Well Deserved Break

I'm going to go on record here and now and claim that Ryunosuke Akutagawa (or the opposite for those of us who, on occasion, need to be understood in Japanese) is the greatest Japanese writer to have ever lived. I do not make such a pronouncement lightly, as he would have to contend with other notables (though not so potables) as Murasaki Shikibu (who's only ho-hum in my opinion), Natsume Soseki (beloved by the Japanese but again ho-hum), and that other whacked out suicide Mishima Yukio.

I came to this conclusion as I finished with F. Scott (for the moment) and picked up "In a Grove" (藪の中) again for a nice short train read. Those of you familiar with the Kurosawa movie Rashomon, will notice, after reading "In a Grove," that it is in fact the actual story the movie is based on. Same idea: seven contradictory accounts of the same event, a woman's rape and the murder of her husband, none of which provide the reader with any definitive answers as to what really happened. I love this story, because everytime I read it, I finish with a completely different conclusion, and I never know from one read to the next what I'll think. I suppose it's somewhat like reading renga.

Akutagawa understands prose so thoroughly--going out on a limb here--because he never wrote a novel (ironic, then that the prize that bears his name is always given to a young novelist). He manages to distill into precise moments everything he wants to say (and everything he wants to keep from you), while for the most part avoiding the poetic affectations that such a process could inspire. Where Soseki would have droned on for hundreds of pages telling you precisely everything you needed to know, Akutagawa merely tinkers with what you probably already know and leaves you to deal with the horror of your own assumptions.

When going to meet and eat with a Japanese family for the first time, I buck myself up for the usual battery: "you can use chopsticks!" "you can speak Japanese!" "do you have [incredibly mundane item] where you're from?" But when we went to have a semi-traditional meal with Akiko's family, I got none of that. The conversation was engaging, and I have to say I enjoyed a break from being on "explain myself" duty. Perhaps, though, Shiori (a native from the town where I live) wasn't so keen on having her Japanese cred challenged, but all was in good humor. We drank sake with a fish steeped in it and gorged ourselves on roasted whole amago, gohei mochi, and agehan (fried foods). Even with the pounding headache I got from all the smoke, it was well worth the trip to the middle of nowhere.