A study of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s “YASUKICHIMONO”

“YASUKICHIMONO” means a series of novel that “Horikawa Yasukichi” plays the leading role written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Furthermore, these novels are mainly referring to his experience of being an English drillmaster in Japanese navy organ school in Yokosuka from 1916 to 1919. Comparing with Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s well-known historical novel "RASHOMON" (1915),"HANA (the nose)" (1916) and so on, although this series didn’t receive high attention as them, we can recognize Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s opinion about the expansion of Japanese navy’s armament during World War I, the ideological trend of socialism, the influence of the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake and so on. It may be said that “YASUKICHIMONO” plays an unusual role in Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s literature.

From the time"YASUKICHIMONO" published in 1923, it was regarded as “Ich-Roman” (a form of private novel that popular in Japanese literature), and researchers concern "YASUKICHIMONO" as the reflection that Ryunosuke Akutagawa started to expose himself in his late era of writing. Ryunosuke Akutagawa resists private exposure in his writings as an exclusion of naturalism literature since the beginning of his literature works. If it is true that Ryunosuke Akutagawa compromise his principles on writing attitude to naturalism by "YASUKICHIMONO" which early researcher’s conclusion said, why did Ryunosuke Akutagawa carry a third person character "Horikawa Yasukichi" in his writing? This is an intensely interesting question that “YASUKICHIMONO” left.

By thorough study of “YASUKICHIMONO " and works concerned in this paper, we can identify not only Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s attitude toward current affairs of 1910-20s, but also his change of writing stance. A change of aptitude in theme’s choice is occurred in “YASUKICHIMONO”. Ryunosuke Akutagawa tried to shift his writing theme from history to modern daily life, and show his contemplation to individual.