On Akutagawa Novel, "rashomon" And "konjakumonogatari Set"

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was born in Tokyo in 1892, the son of father ToshizōNiihara who was a dairy merchant. Seven months after he was born, he was sent to his grandma's house and raised by his maternal aunt. His mother died when he was 11 years old. The year after, he was adopted to his uncle Akutagawa Dōshō, from whom he received the Akutagawa family name. As the adopted son of the ancient clan, he inherited the style of Edo scholars.Akutagawa entered primary school in 1898 and he studied in the First High School after graduating from the the 3rd middle school of capital. Kume Masao, Kan Kikuchi and Bunmei Tsuchiya, all of whom were his classmates. He began writing after entering Tokyo Imperial University in 1913, where he studied English literature. During that period, he co-edited literary journal Shinshichō("New Currents of Thought") (The 3rd time) with Kan Kikuchi and Kume Masao, thus began his literary career. In 1914, Akutagawa published his short story"Rashōmon"in the literary magazine Teikoku Bungaku ("Imperial Literature"). Natsume Sōseki became Akutagawa's mentor through Suzuki Miekichi's introduction."Hana"("The Nose", 1916), which was published in the first issue of the resumed publication of Shinshicho for the fourth time, and it was highly praised by Natsume Sōseki.From December 1916 to May 1918, he taught at the Naval Engineering School in Yokosuka as an English language instructor and at the same time he put great efforts in writing. After quitting the teaching post, he entered Osaka Mainichi Shinbun (Osaka Daily News) and devoted his full efforts to writing. He got married in May 1919. In February 1921, Akutagawa visited China for Osaka Mainichi Shinbun as a reporter. During his visit in Beijing, he had a meeting with Hu Shi and went back to Japan that September, which was mentioned in Shanhai Yuki (A report on the journey of Shanghai).Since April 1927, Akutagawa had engaged in a spirited debate against famed author Jun'ichirōTanizaki who proposed"the interest of story". Akutagawa attacked Tanizaki by claiming that story shouldn't be judged by its interest. This debate which was considered to be of the leading mainstream of the Post-War critical literature of Monogatari had been recorded in the history of literature.Akutagawa filled his work allusions to classic literature of China and Japan. For example, he gained material from a story of Tang Dynasty entitled"Tu Tze-chun"and published with"The spider's web"in the magazine Red bird, founded by Suzuki Miekichi. Apart from Chinese classical literature, his works also based on Catholicism and the living theatre in Hei An dynasty. Moreover, his other works were inspired by Japanese Folklore. For example,"Rashōmon","The Nose","Yam Gruel"from"Konjaku Monogatarishū";"Hell Screen"from"Uji Shūi Monogatari". In addition, he also had a high attainment in Chinese language and agonizing language.There were a huge difference between his early works and later works. His early works had received a widely praise. In the aspect of history, he particularly was good at describing characters psychological insight, especially the description of individualism. His work"Hell Screen"and the long story"Jashūmon", which explicitly promote Art's for Art's sake, hadn't gained later scholars'high appraise. Perhaps because the fact that he re-examine his own life and contemplate suicide and other reasons, there was a lot of works about life and death in this period.But in his later works, such as"A clod of earth", had began to describe the modern phenomena compared with the former works. But also, he had been attacked as "the bourgeois writer in the proletariat literary world." Though his works of this period,"Daidoji Shinsuke: The Early Years"and"Death Register"were regarded as confessional autobiography, in his later years masterpiece,"Kappa"which described the world and strongly criticized the human society.In this paper, the author firstly discussed Akutagawa's early work"Rashomon". As we all know,"Rashomon"based on the Japanese series Konjaku Monogatarishūin the Middle Age. Mr. Lu Xun once commented on Akutagawa's novel:"taking facts from ancient times, injecting new life into it, and then it can be related to modern people."On this basis, this paper aims to compare Akutagawa's novel"Rashomon"and its original version"Konjaku Monogatarishū", thus to capture the description of the main characters and to explore the psychology of modern people carried out by that.