The Short Fiction of Akutagawa Ryunosuke Akutagawa

How is it that one’s purpose or direction in life always seems to be predetermined? Nowhere is there a check point where it is appropriate to pick what one’s hopes and aspirations are and magically expect them to happen. The only plausible...

Although the title of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story “In a Grove” may not be familiar, the story may well be. In 1922, Sincho magazine published “In a Grove” as a kind of ancient Japanese detective story, with the mystery at the center of the...

Loyalty is a character trait which is held in high esteem throughout the world, and even people who do not explicitly value loyalty still have loyalty to certain ideas. Whether it is to people, ideas, religions, or objects, most people carry...