The Life-and-Death And Its Development In Creation Of Akutagawa Ryunosuke

Akutagawa Ryunosuke is one of the most influential writers in the history of theJapanese modern literature as well as the leading role of the New Sense school in Japan.Together with Natsume Soseki and Mori ōgai, they were praised as the three great masters ofthe early20thcentury literature field in Japan. During his ephemeral literature life whichlasted only for over ten years, Akutagawa Ryunosuke has created more than one hundred andforty short essays. At the same time he also left lots of classic Han Poetry, Haiku, literaturecomment, prose, essay and so on. Although most of the essays created by AkutagawaRyunosuke are short essays, the material covers a wide range and the style is compact. What’smore, the words chosen by him are terse but leave the readers endless space to think aboutthem. That is the reason why he is praised as “Taisho wizard” or “Taisho genius” Since1953the Japanese set up “Akuta Literature Prize” which was named after the family nameAkutagawa Ryunosuke in order to memorize his great contribution to Japanese Literature.This prize still has the great reputation in the modern literature in Japan.However, it is such a great pity that the resplendent shining star in Japan modernliterature ended his life by committing suicide at the prime time of life when he was thirty-five years old. There is a range of views about why he committed suicide, but we still can notget a conclusion. Of these views the most convincing are the psychological shadow in hisearly childhood, the burden of family after growing up, the deviation of Art conception whichhe pursuits from the main stream of society.. Based on these reasons, Akutagawa Ryunosukeviews the birth,death and illness with his own unique opinion.“Birth and death”, the internalliterature topic, is the main theme in the works of Akutagawa Ryunosuke. He blends hisconsciousness of death in his essays to explore this ultimate argument in Philosophy. Thispaper uses the text analysis and the research of the social history as the main analysis method,and also gives an overview of Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s classic creations and a comparisonwith his other literary works. In this process we can explore the evolution of AkutagawaRyunosuke’s death consciousness and the reason for this evolution.This paper is divided into three chapters. Chapter1. Take the creations of AkutagawaRyunosuke’s early and middle period as example. It is divided into two parts: the early timeincluding Rashomon, the middle time In a Grove,The Spider’s Thread. We respectivelyanalyses the diverse death consciousness in his different creations during different life periods.Chapter2. Take Kappa A Fool’s Life and his last creation The Man of the West as example Inthis part we analyses the pessimistic and cynical death consciousness in his later time indetails. Chapter3. We mainly search into the reason that causes his evolution of deathconsciousness. The process covers from his tough childhood experiences to the influences ofreligion in his growing up and then the deviation of his own pursuit from the main stream ofthe society which explains clearly the evolution. All these lead to his final tragic choice—suicide.