Rashoman & Other Stories
“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality,” according to Dante Aleghieri, just how seared Ryunosuke Akutagawa is, however, is anyone’s guess. Rarely does it occur in the course of human events that an author of Akutagawa’s analytical genius is able to live without persecution from without, in Ryunosuke’s case, however, the distress came from within. Almost as an impartial umpire he seems to desire taking society over his shoulder and carrying it back, kicking and screaming, into its more moral past, yet at the same time realizes the selfish hypocrisy of his own aspirations and perhaps it is this own reality that drives him to his eventual end. He sees the best men of his generation mining coal and pulling rickshaws, he sees Western ‘civilization’ forcing them to work jobs they hate to buy stuff they don’t need, he sees, in short, the destruction of an idealized traditional Japanese culture by a very different west. Part of Akutagawa undoubtedly wants to view the Westerners influence upon Japan as immoral and corrupt, yet he sees the Janus-faced duplicity of his position, who is he to define morality? What right does he or any other member or gr
Over and over again Ryunosuke Akutagawa keeps hitting upon the same theme, the fact that the very idea of morality itself could be considered immoral and that no culture should seek to ingratiate itself to another through assimilation as that can only serve to subvert the good of the original culture. There are only so many ways to approach the paradoxical trap constructed for mankind by morality, and all of them trigger something far worse than anything the bases of morals were intended to prevent. The true genius of Akutagawa is that upon realizing this he poses no solution, as there is none. He seems to stand back looking upon his audience with a knowing smile that appears to say, ‘Yes, now you too know what I know, what everyone should be aware of. This knowledge truly is power greater than any other.” oup in society have to judge morality? Nevertheless one can’t help but apply one’s own values to any and all situations in some sort of self-absorbed ethnocentristic trial of values, something that, without fail, always makes us out in the wrong, and Ryunosuke is human, just like everyone else. No wonder he was so despondent as to take his own life, he was repulsed by what he saw and was, himself, what he
Some topics in this essay:
Ryunosuke Akutagawa,
Western Japanese,
Japan Akutagawa,
,
Dante Aleghieri,
balance illusion reality”,
balance illusion,
“precarious balance illusion,
“precarious balance,
illusion reality”,
define morality,
ryunosuke akutagawa,
ryunosuke demonstrates,
‘in grove’,
Join now to see the rest of the essay!
Approximate Word count = 825
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
Example Essays Home
