Mandarins

Hello Gentle Reader

In my day Gentle Reader, mandarins, were known as: Christmas oranges. They were a sign that we had entered into the holly jolly season. They were one of those delights of Christmas. For the rest of the year, the oranges were large, and their peels hard, and cumbersome to get through. Unless otherwise cut up, and served, they were rarely eaten. Yet the Christmas orange, with its soft peel, was a welcomed sight into the household. I can still remember the box sitting on the kitchen table, and the oranges neatly wrapped in green tissue paper. At times the oranges, were not quite ripe, and still held blemishes of green on their peels; and the oranges would be sour. This was the beginning of the Christmas season. Soon the arrival of the advent calendar would take place. Those opened windows becoming the countdown for the eventual day. Snow by this time would have already become a daily occurrence, and snow boots, and winter coats, were dragged out of storage. Still thoughts of Santa clause danced in our hands; and the debate of his existence would once again be resumed. Though each of us – even his most adamant, prosecutors; had wished for his existence to be true. This collection of short stories by the Japanese master of the short story Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, may share the name or title “Mandarin,” but there is nothing about Christmas, in these regards.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa is known more for two short stories: “Rashomon,” and “In a Bamboo Grove.” Both of these stories have been immortalized under the title: “Rashomon,” because of the film under the same name by Kurosawa. This title and the subsequent film have popularized Akutagawa, but only by the one piece of work. When Penguin released a new collection of Akutagawa’s work, it was titled “Rashomon: and 17 Other Stories.” Thankfully Archipelago Books, translation of Akutagawa’s stories, avoid both these two overtly anthologized stories; and the shadow that they cast over the oeuvre of Akutagawa’s – which has yet to be fully made available for English speaking readers. However Gentle Reader, what has interested most in Akutagawa, was his life. To say that Akutagawa was less than a happy person; would be an understatement. Akutagawa, the only son of his parents, was haunted throughout his short life, by the fact that his mother had gone insane, shortly after his birth. This overshadowed the future tormented writer, who eventually committed suicide at the age of thirty five years old. This has type casted, Akutagawa in many ways. In the end, Akutagawa is seen to be just another Japanese writer, who had committed suicide; his death itself overshadows his achievements as a writer; much like Osamu Dazai and Yukio Mishima. However, his death itself was what brought me towards, Akutagawa, not only as a reader, but also as an individual. While reading “Mandarins,” one comes to see Akutagawa eventually, faces life directly. He knows it; observes it and studies it. Then with clinical and analytical thought and precision, Akutagawa comes to the conclusion: that life really is not worth the bother.. In these regards, at the age of thirty-five years old, the young author overdosed on barbiturates – Veronal, to be exact; ending his nervous delirium, and fears of a vague and uncertain future. One can only hope that Akutagawa found peace and salvation in death – in which he was determined to travel towards, at a very young age.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa is widely regarded as: the grandfather of the Japanese short story. His stories do not necessarily have a central plot, or a story to tell. Rather Akutagawa is more focused on how it is told, as well as the psychological probing of the fictional individuals. In this sense Akutagawa, is a lot like many great short story writers. The list would most certainly include Anton Chekhov, Antonio Tabucchi, as well as Yasunari Kawabata and the contemporary master of the short story: Alice Munro. To be completely honest my dear Gentle Reader, I am by all means biased to the short story genre. A great short story writer must do a fine tight rope act, of destroying all aspects of any sense of over indulgence in verbosity; but still being able to tell a proper story. Within a good short story, little may happen; but a subtle realization, suddenly makes the entire story all that much worth it. Akutagawa captures this perfectly in the title story of this collection: “Mandarins.”

“Mandarins,” is a short story, which comes to a total of five pages. “Mandarins,” is a story narrated by an upper class cultured gentleman, who has an air of melancholic despair with the mundane activities of life – amplified by this tedious train ride. This is only made all that much worst, when an uninvited guest, makes herself comfortable in his first class carriage; and our unnamed narrator perturbed by this; chooses to ignore her, this lower class individual and falls into a nap. As our narrator remarks:

“I found her vulgar features quite displeasing and was further repelled by her dirty clothes.”

Our narrator awakens, to find this intrusive pest of a guest, seated next to him, and soon, trying vigorously to open the window, and upon success sticks her head outside, and gazes forward. This eventually leads the young country lady, to toss five to six mandarin oranges to three red-cheeked boys. The oranges are compared in their radiance and colour to that of the warmth of the sun. In this brief instant the narrator, comes to understands “the meaning of it all.” It ends on a rather sentimental; however after a closer look, the story comes to be understood as a rather impressionistic tale. The kind of tale that represents the daily life of Tokyo and the abhorrence and despair that one finds themselves in, once their life takes on that same daily routine, continually. The landscape never changing; the work never ending; the same old tasks day in and day out; and then suddenly with the rather violent interruption of someone, that one would rather not, take a second look at or even give a thought to; comes and disrupts this despair ridden existence in which Akutagawa writes about. This simple activity in Akutagawa’s story – this interruption; becomes elation; where the drudge of daily routine and existence is side stepped, and one comes to a subtle understanding. No longer is our narrator of this story, who is filled with ennui and boredom; and so apathetic with the concept of traveling – his destination or purpose of this journey is never specified; finally escapes his own boredom and is less preoccupied with: “[ . . . ] the myriad commonplace matters of the world.”

One part of Akutagawa’s writing I have noticed throughout this collection, is how varied his stories are; from “Mandarins,” to “Kesa and Morita,” to “The Life of a Fool,” and “Cogwheels.” If one were to look at these stories separately with the exception “The Life of a Fool,” and “Cogwheels,” – they will come to see a new form or different way of telling the story. “Mandarins,” for example, proceeded in traditional Chekhovian sense. Nothing happens in a sense of a ‘story,’ or ‘plot,’ within the work. When we leave the story, we are still uncertain of our narrators destination; his uncontrolled ennui and apathy; but Akutagawa leads the story to the point, where the narrator comes to a understanding, by the intervention of someone unexpected. It is there that the story comes to that epiphany moment. “Kesa and Morito,” is written in a dramatic sense. It is written in two soliloquies, of the two characters Kesa and Morito. It’s a bitter tale, of love, lust and murder. Morito, once loved the lead female character Kesa, but now only uses her and sees her as a mistress; yet still Morito agrees to murder Kesa’s husband. Morito has his redemptive qualities, becoming a very sympathetic character early on. Dreading the thought of what he will do, he laments the task at hand:

“So the moon is out. There was a time when I could not wait for it to appear, but now this very brightness has become a dread omen. I tremble at the thought that this night I shall lose my soul, that tomorrow I shall be a common murderer. How rightly the mind’s eye sees my hands already crimson with blood! How damned I shall soon seem even to myself! It would cause me no such anguish if I were to kill a detested foe. Yet tonight I must take the life of a man I do not hate.”

Kesa on the other hand despises herself. She despises herself, with self-loathing and hatred, for allowing the affair to go on. Yet in this same sense, she is the one that makes the request, that Morito murder her husband. In a sense there is a feeling that Akutagawa has no sympathies for Kesa. She herself is to blame for the situation, that is about to unfold. Her own infidelity that she allowed to continue is to blame, for a innocent man to die. It should be noted, Akutagawa never one wrote a love story. In fact women very rarely appear in his fiction; and those that do, are seen as deceitful, domineering, selfish, and always heading towards to some untimely destruction; often taking their male victims with them. It would be rather presumptuous to state that this stems from Akutagawa’s own mother. A being he loathed; who went insane after his birth, died when he was ten years old, and in an ironic sense of humour left him with the seed of insanity; that had eventually claimed Akutagawa himself. Though this is a large theory, it rings with a steel surgical blade of rational thought and honesty.

“The Life of a Fool,” and “Cogwheels,” are written in a very similar style. They are made up of brief vignettes. “The Life of a Fool,” details Akutagwa’s final stages of his life. His growing distaste for life. This story, is noted at the beginning, as being entrusted with Masao Kume, and the letter, is dated June 20(th) 1927. This date is particular because it’s just over a month before Akutagawa eventual suicide at the age of thirty five. In this sense, this is both a ‘autobiography,’ and a ‘story,’ as well as a final farewell and suicide note, before his eventual self-imposed exile into death. In one such vignette titled “.44 Death,” Akutagawa clinically details a suicidal thought as well as attempt and the trepidation he feels at the thought of committing the act:

[ .44 Death }

“Taking advantage of being alone in his room, he set about to hang himself with a sash tied to the bars of the window. Yet when put his head in the noose, he was suddenly struck by the fear of death, though he was not afraid of the momentary pain that such would entail. He took out of his pocket watch the second time and by way of experiment measured how long it might take for him to be strangled. After a few uncomfortable moments, all became quite muddled. Once beyond that stage, he would surely enter the realm of death. He consulted his watch saw that his distress had lasted one minute and some twenty seconds. Beyond the window all was pitch-black, but in that darkness could be heard the raucous crowing of a rooster.”

Though Akutagawa throughout “The Life of a Fool,” and “Cogwheels,” beats the same drum repeatedly and grimly, its offers the reader, a glimpse into Akutagawa as a writer and as a individual. These stories are made bearable by the fact that, the style that they are written in, is manageable, in their fragmentation; as well as offering variations on a very depressing subject. One that is grossly close to the author, as he exercises his demons.

Akutagawa lived a life, in which he wished to escape his own prescient feeling that he would go mad, and in a sense lost himself to literature: “A single line of Baudelaire is worth more than all of life.” Looking at his work in a historical sense, Akutagawa details, the shift in Japan from its traditional roots, into modernity. Themes that both Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima had later picked up later. Now these works are lost to other authors. Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami as well as other Japanese authors, are now more international and have lost that sense of Japan, that once was apparent. In this sense, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa laments this eventual decline and destruction of what was the true ‘core,’ or Japan. This is my first acquaintance with the author, and was not disappointed – disturbed at points; but in the end I applaud the author for what he had achieved in his short life.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*

M. Mary