Reading Akutagawa as a Japanese Learner: The Spider's Thread, Rashōmon and The Nose
Hiroki Obara · Developer
Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (芥川龍之介) was born on March 1, 1892 and died on July 24, 1927. Aozora Bunko’s author page notes that while he was a student at Tokyo Imperial University he published 鼻 (The Nose) in the coterie magazine 新思潮 (Shinshichō), that Natsume Sōseki praised it highly, and that his literary career took off from there. Most of his work is short fiction. It is in the public domain in Japan, and you can read it in the original, free, on Aozora Bunko.
Because Akutagawa wrote short stories, he is a good first writer for learners who want to read one complete work in the original. This post compares three of them, 蜘蛛の糸 (The Spider’s Thread), 鼻 (The Nose) and 羅生門 (Rashōmon), and looks at which order to read them in.
How long the three works are
The counts use the modern-spelling (新字新仮名) editions on Aozora Bunko, the same way as in Which Japanese Classics Can You Read at Each JLPT Level?, leaving out furigana, editorial notes and spaces. The figures are rounded.
| Work | Published | Characters | Kanji ratio | Divisions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 蜘蛛の糸 The Spider’s Thread | 1918 | about 2,900 | 26% | 3 chapters |
| 鼻 The Nose | 1916 | about 5,700 | 30% | none |
| 羅生門 Rashōmon | 1915 | about 5,700 | 28% | none |
夢十夜 (Ten Nights of Dreams), which I compared in the post on Natsume Sōseki, is about 16,000 characters. All three of these are shorter. The Nose and Rashōmon are almost the same length, and neither is divided into chapters. You decide for yourself whether to read each in one sitting or stop at a paragraph break.
First: The Spider’s Thread
One to start with is 蜘蛛の糸. According to its Aozora Bunko card, it first appeared in the July 1918 issue of 赤い鳥 (Akai Tori), a magazine for children.
A great thief has fallen into hell, and a single spider’s thread comes down to him from paradise. The story has three chapters of around 1,000 characters each. Its shape is close to a folk tale, and you are unlikely to lose track of what is happening.
The style has one feature to know about. The narration itself is in the polite ございます form: 「ある日の事でございます。」 (“It was one day.”) It sounds like someone telling the story aloud to a listener. The Buddha’s actions are stacked with honorifics, such as 御歩きになって and 御覧になりました. If you are not used to this much keigo it may slow you down at first, but the same patterns repeat, and they can become clear within a chapter.
The other thing is the hero’s name, Kandata (かんだた). It is written with kanji you will rarely see, and although the name appears again and again, the furigana is given only a few times. Learn the reading early and you can recognise the name by its shape after that.
Second: The Nose
鼻 appeared in Shinshichō in February 1916. This is the story Sōseki praised.
Zenchi Naigu, a priest at Ike-no-o, has a nose five or six 寸 long that hangs from above his upper lip to below his chin. He pretends not to mind, but inwardly it has troubled him all his life. The story moves when a disciple comes back with a method for making a nose shorter.
It comes before Rashōmon here because the plot is clear and the story has a dry humour. The narration explains the characters’ feelings carefully as it goes.
What makes it hard is the vocabulary of the priesthood. Buddhist terms such as 内供, 沙弥 and 内道場供奉 appear from the first paragraph. Lengths are given in 寸 and 尺. One 寸 is about 3 centimetres, so five or six 寸 is roughly 15 to 18 centimetres. With words like these, you can check the meaning roughly and move on. You will also meet katakana spelled differently from today, such as デリケイト for “delicate”.
Third: Rashōmon
羅生門 appeared in the November 1915 issue of 帝国文学 (Teikoku Bungaku). It has been read in Japanese high school textbooks for a long time, so most Japanese people know the story.
In Heian-period Kyoto, a servant (下人) who has been dismissed by his master waits for the rain to stop under the ruined Rashōmon gate. Unclaimed bodies have been left in the tower above.
It is about as long as The Nose, but it can be harder going. Words for Heian clothing such as 市女笠 and 揉烏帽子 appear in the first paragraph. The servant’s 襖 is read あお here, not ふすま, and it is a garment, not a sliding door. The furigana gives you the readings, but you will need a dictionary for the meanings.
There are some interesting touches too. Partway through, the narrator steps in and says 「作者はさっき、『下人が雨やみを待っていた』と書いた。」 (“The author wrote a moment ago that the servant was waiting for the rain to stop.”) and then corrects himself. In another place the French word Sentimentalisme appears in Latin letters to describe the servant’s mood. Both show a writer of the Taishō era looking at a Heian story from outside.
Japanese readers who know the story from school can still find something new in the original, in details like these. For a learner, knowing the plot in advance helps too. Even when many words are new, you are less likely to get lost.
The older stories behind them
The Aozora Bunko card for Rashōmon says it takes its material from a tale in book 29 of 今昔物語集 (Konjaku Monogatarishū), about a thief who climbs to the upper storey of the Rajōmon gate and sees the dead. The Nose is also based on a story of a long-nosed priest found in 今昔物語集 and 宇治拾遺物語 (Uji Shūi Monogatari).
These older tales are written in classical Japanese from the Heian and Kamakura periods, so they are not something a learner needs to read right away. Still, it helps to know that Akutagawa borrowed old plots and added the characters’ inner thoughts. Why the servant hesitates, and why the priest is not at peace even once his nose is short: that is what Akutagawa added.
What tends to trip learners up
A few points common to all three works:
云う and 勿論. As with Sōseki, 言う (to say) is almost always written 云う. Words that are usually written in hiragana today, such as 勿論 (もちろん), 所が (ところが) and 可き (べき), appear in kanji.
Long sentences with many commas. In Rashōmon and The Nose, one sentence often runs on for a long time, broken by commas. One way is to read to the end of the sentence first, then go back and connect the subject to the verb.
Furigana only the first time. Difficult kanji often get furigana only where they first appear, and not after that. From the second time on, you need to remember the reading yourself.
Reading Akutagawa in Niho
I make Niho, a free reader for iPhone and iPad that holds the Aozora Bunko catalogue of more than 17,000 works.
On the Discover screen you can search for 芥川龍之介 or a title without a connection. Rashōmon also exists in an old-character, old-kana edition (旧字旧仮名). A work’s detail screen shows its spelling, so choose the 新字新仮名 edition. If you do want to try old kana, I wrote Reading Old Kana Spelling.
Furigana is shown only where the source edition has it. When you meet a word without furigana the second time, select it and tap Look up to see its meaning, JLPT level and kanji breakdown. Words you look up are kept in your word book together with the sentence you found them in, so you can go back to names like かんだた or 内供. Names and old words that are not in the dictionary can be checked through the Jisho item in the selection menu.
Niho shows text horizontally only, not vertically. More of Akutagawa’s short stories are in 30 Easy Japanese Classics on Aozora Bunko for Learners, and Getting Started with Niho walks through your first book.
