Mandarins

Ryunosuke Akutagawa blends a sense of sad inevitability with subtle irony. Reflective and often humorous, these tales reveal an enormous amount about Japanese culture, while the inner struggles of the characters always strike the universal.

Born in Tokyo in 1892. In 1915, he published Rashomon, which gained international recognition and became a classic film. After a period of severe depression, Akutagawa committed suicide in 1927, at age thirty-five. Eight years after Akutagawa's death he was commemorated through the establishment of the Akutagawa Prize for literature, the most prestigious literary prize in Japan. Charles DeWolf is a professor at Keio University in Tokyo, and is a translator and linguist specializing in classical and modern Japanese literature. His past translations include Konjaku Monotagari's "Tales of Days Gone By" He is also the author of How to Sound Intelligent In Japanese: A Vocabulary Builder, and a contributor to Japan Airlines "Skyward" magazine.