Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Ryunosuke Akutagawa wrote “In a Bamboo Grove” in 1922. Ryunosuke 's “In a Bamboo Grove” reflects the world at the time. “In a Bamboo Grove” Akutagawa gives the characters a sense of moral ambiguity. “In a Bamboo Grove” a murder has taken place during the story, there are many different perspectives of what actually happened to the man that was murdered. There are three different confessions about who killed the man. Ryunosuke Akutagawa used important literature that depicted different perspectives. It is an example of how gender and culture play a major role in each point of view in understanding and forming the truth. The wife acts like a woman, as she is expected to act, which makes her look weak and incompetent. She should have defended…

Howard Hibbett says of Ryunosuke Akutagawa that he successfully “converts an old melodramatic tale into a series of conflicting statements which undermine our prosaic confidence in distinguishing between subjective and objective, truth and fiction” (14.) This is especially true for “In a Grove” because each of the three main characters give the conflicting confessions about the death of the samurai. Furthermore, they each have something to gain by possibly lying, which make it even more…

People set forth on a new journey for exploring unknowns, and a journey could always help them in knowing what they want inwardly. François Villon and Matsuo Bashō have gained tremendous inspirations while travelling/exiling, and both of them hope to be free spiritually. However, they do have various different altitudes since they are from different cultures and have different religious beliefs. But to some extent, Villon and Bashō have the same value towards death. From François Villon’s poems,…