Akutagawa Death Awareness Study

Akuta Ryunosuke (1892-1927) is the leading writer of the New Sense school in Japan. His witty, profound,terse writing style makes his literary works are with high artistic value. Sadly he ended his own life to commit suicide. There is a range of views about the causes of his suicide, which mainly include great physical and psychological anguish, burden of secular life, trouble of private life, exhaustion on creation, conflicts between Art for Art's Sake and class consciousness, and so on. In fact, the theme of death conventionally throughout his writing.The ultimate and inevitability of death make death a personal own event. So it will be helpful for us to analysis the consciousness of individuals to face death, and the meaning of facing life positively which is engendered by the fear that death is the negativity of life, and thus to realize the transcendence of life. This paper try to give Akuta Ryunosuke's works a systematic comparison,analysis and interpretation with text analysis as main means,hoping to explor the death consciousness which had been existed and influenced the whole life of Akuta Ryunosuke and the influences got from the Japanese domestic cultural tradition and the western Christianity tradition.The paper is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1.The introduction part mainly states the research overview on Akuta Ryunosuke in China this decade, and the relationship between death and literary creation. Chapter 2.The death consciousness of Akuta Ryunosuke. Taking Akuta Ryunosuke's literary creation as the main clue, this chaper expounds the found of death, the fear of death, the undertaking of death, the transcendence of death in the order that they appear in his life. Chapter 3. Akuta Ryunosuke and the Japanese traditonal concept of death. Shinto, Japanese traditional religion, has influenced Akuta Ryunosuke in these ways:the realizing of samsara, the praise of human strength, and the praise of giving human strenth. So Bushido became the target of criticism by Akuta Ryunosuke, while Sorrow has nfluenced Akuta Ryunosuke by the pursuit of instant flash of life. Chapter 4. Akuta Ryunosuke and Christian death consciousness. From artistic appetite to spiritual sustenance, Christian and Jesushas has gave Akuta Ryunosuke a poetic shore as well as the ascension and redemption of soul.In short, as a writer with distinct characteristics, the discussion of death which hidden in the Akuta's work make us saw his consciousness of the death in the Taisho period, under the double impact of the local culture and Western culture. And this consciousness is not a fascination with death or even practice it, but pay attention to the existence of life, value and significance through death. This also is the main idea of this paper.