The Narration And Reading Behavior In Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s Short Storys

Akutagawa Ryunosuke is a famous short-story writer in Japan. With a complex narrative way and weird style, his works are unique. Because of this, he is called "Wizard". His works have always been concerned and explored by the readers and researchers. In China, the researchers from the perspective of comparative literature discuss his relationship with modern Chinese writers, his Chinese sentiment and so on, from the perspective of text analysis to explore the theme of his stories and religious consciousness, from the perspective of narratology to explore the unreliable narrator and polyphonic narrative techniques, making his works distinctive and thriving.This work focuses on narration and reading behaviors described in the text of Akutagawa’s short stories. Firstly, it studies the significance of narration and reading in his text. The author thinks that narration behavior of characters in his text is a kind of behavior with a purpose, and its essence is through the active behavior of narration to realize the desire of the narrator. This desire is often used to prove itself in ethical legitimacy. But this expectation is always facing the failure. Under this corresponding relation between narration, reading, expectation and the demise, Akutagawa shows the post-modern style transcending the times.Reading is referred as the correspondent behavior of description and it can be said that without reading means no text. In his short stories, reading behavior also plays a key role. If narration behavior is doomed to be failed in the text, the significant cause can be considered as the initiatives of reading behavior to the text. In his novels, great initiatives are showed in the reading behavior of the characters. Reading behavior is powerful as deities, crumbly destroying the narrator’s expectation within the text. After narration and reading behaviors are discussed respectively, we focus on the relationship between the two issues. Among his novels, there is a fierce competition between narration and reading behaviors. Their goal can be regarded as interpretation rights. The narrator tries to acquire the initiatives through his narration, and allows readers to accept his explanation about the meaning. But reading behavior has tremendous powers of creation, which makes it in an invincible position. Each time, narration has to be defeated by reading.Finally, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, a writer of Taisho era is discussed in this kind of narration and reading. Some features of post-modernism are showed in this text. Post-modernism is the continuation and supplements of modernism, which tends to discuss polyphony, power relations, decentralization and other issues. In his text, there are constant struggles between narration and reading for the interpretation rights, which in some ways bring in emptiness of his text’s center. Discussion on the authoritative emptiness is an important characteristic of post-modernism in akutagawa ryunosuke works.