The 20s/30s of either Japan or China

A Matter of Perspective

Deciphering Truth and Modernism in Ryunosuke Akutagawa 's In a Grove

For a reader , Ryunosuke Akutagawa 's 1922 short story In a Grove gives more questions than answers as the last sentence ends . Within the story Akutagawa presents seven accounts surrounding the murder of a samurai named Kanazawa no Takehiro in a bamboo grove . Three of the seven accounts clearly contradict each other , calling into question not only their accuracy but the accuracy of any of the seven accounts . Through this device , Akutagawa pursues the question of truth

not as a constant but as a subjective element of the human experience

The instability of linear truth for Akutagawa is not limited just to In a Grove . Several of his story stories present a re-telling of events or intertextualization of previous literary works that call into question the assumed truths of the narrators . It has been argued in cases like his 1920 short story The Ball , a re-telling of an earlier work by a French author , that he was clearly deploying these literary techniques to articulate a strongly felt political sensibility , particularly with regard to the issue of Western cultural imperialism in Japan (Rosenfeld , 2000

In A Grove does not lend itself to such a clear-cut argument of Western resentment . It does , however , possibly open itself up to a questioning of pre-Meiji (and , pre-Western ) values . Of the three most contentious accounts of events presented within the story , can really be perceived any more or less true...