Here we are, in the big 2026. As with all years, everyone is more confused as to the state of the world and suffering in the same way ants do in a death spiral. The future is easy to predict- people will always be a little bit puzzled outwardly, and deeply, unknowably confused within. It is shockingly easy to be pessimistic. It's our base state, after all. Human pessimism is a closer approximation of reality than human optimism. This is why we are all depressed. There's a secret, hidden level of depression that happens if you go too far, at which point society calls you mentally ill and you gain and lose certain privileges.
God, pessimism is comforting isn't it? It's like sitting in a chair warmed by a person you once loved. But you must get up. You must get up, and do anything. In our world, it is easy to do the absolute bare minimum above nothing, skimming the top of the abyss. 0.0001% of a thing. I did a thing. I read Hell Screen, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. It's a book which is secretly 10 stories, each completely independant and interesting. It's only 200 little pages, some of the stories taking up as little as 8. These stories were written from 1915-1927, so they carry a certain war-affected despondency one comes to expect from that period, only amplified by how clearly miserable it's author is. That's where good art comes from, after all.
I'm going to review each of these stories, one by one. I may have very few things to say about some of them, as it becomes clearer and clearer how every single one of these tales is merely fictional setup, for the final story: Spinning Gears. A true story, with the very author, Ryunosuke Akutagawa as it's protagonist. That last one. Never have I read something so depressive. This is your chance to go and read Hell Screen now.
Our first story is called Rashōmon.
Rashōmon [10 pages]
A Rashōmon is simply a city gate, marking entry to the Suzaka Avenue- a central avenue leading to the palace-zone of a major city. There were, thus, two. One in Nara, which was not very storied or noteworthy, and the other in Kyoto. By the 12th century, it had fallen into great decay. It become known as a hideout for thieves and other criminals. It was common to abandon babies and dead bodies at the gate. This is the setting for Rashōmon, and context that is spelled out to the reader on the very first page. It follows a servant who is "waiting for the rain to end", but wait actually "had no idea what he was going to do once that happened". He is introduced only as a servant, a name which is defined in relation to a master- who we are told rejects the servant. Thus we are left with an aimless vagabond, aurafarming in the center of Kyoto's Rashōmon. This is a good way to start this book. It gets across a unique purposelessness- rejected by man, now trapped by unstoppable nature.
He proceeds into the gate's upper chamber, where Akutagawa indulges in several paragraphs of description about the many dead bodies that reside there. They are very dead. That much is clear. This is Rashōmon- a tone-setter. The very next thing the servant does is hold an old lady at sword-point, steals all her clothes (of which he has no need for) then kicks her full force. What was she doing amongst the corpses? Stealing hair to make a wig. There is not much hesitation from the servant, not much of anything other than the bare thought: "I have to become a thief".
This is a story from which it's hard to glean much of anything. The young, dashing servant commits heinous crimes against the elderly, within an old gate that itself has declined. It's unsubtly about a perceived decline of society. It's pretty much just "the world today is worse and I don't like it". Which is true. How therapeutic it must have been to write.
It ends with the line "What happened to the lowly servant, no one knows," making sure all he is known for to the reader is a failed career in servitude and a singular, unnecessarily violent crime. I don't have anything to say about this! It's a very surface reading of the text, and there's certainly more being said here, but the desired effect is clearly to whet your palette for the rest of this book.
In a Bamboo Grove [15 pages]
What a vague title. It doesn't really tell you anything.In a Bamboo Grove begins the trend in this book of unreliable narrators. The story itself is about a murder/rape/something that happened *in a bamboo grove*. That last part is all that's clear, because we bounce around between like 5 or 6 different perspectives who all give completely different stories for what occurred. It's unclear who did what to whom with what weapon by what right. It gets so desperate the final account is from the ghost of the victum via spirit medium. This final account, which you might expect should be able to identify the murderer, is just as biased and unclear. No information is concrete at all.
You may have heard the word Rashōmon before. It's a 1950s japanese movie with a story *extremely* similar to In a Bamboo Grove, and inspired the term "Rashōmon Effect", where an event is so unclear it's only muddled further by testimony. That movie is unquestionably inspired by Akutagawa's stories, but it's more of a merge between Rashōmon and this tale, despite being named for it. In the movie, one of the characters professes to being a direct witness and spins a tale with far less ambiguity. The book is less kind- never giving us someone whom does not have a motive to lie. Thus, we learn nothing. I respect Akutagawa for creating this story as a sort of "literacy-training" for the following stories. Appreciate that all narrators from here onwards can and will be lying.
The Nose [11 pages]
In this one, an esteemed priest worries about his hideous nose. So much so, he goes through a weird procedure done by a friend of his, with such sensual description I'm convinced it's a metaphor for gay sex. Weridly yaoi-ful this one... and what's more, even after his nose becomes Normal, he still gets ridiculued. I suppose the lesson is to not feel trapped by your physical appearance. I'm not sure... this one is just kind of funny... we will see more comedy later on, so... I'm just saying this is a silly one and moving on...
The Spider Thread [5 pages]
This story begins immediately with essentially "let me tell you a story children". It's immediately telling the reader that the narrator is not in fact omniscient, and is in fact full of shit. What proceeds is a religious story concerning two people- the Buddha himself, and a sinful man called Kandata. From heaven, the Buddha looks down to see Kandata writhing in the "pool of blood"- and as a reward for a time he spared a spider, The Buddha lowers down a heavenly spider thread from which to deliver him from hell unto heaven. Kandata climbs this rope, only to make it halfway up and witness other sinners climbing up as well. As soon as he yells at them to get off his thread, it snaps, and he falls back into hell.
The book describes Kandata's sins specificially- he "burned houses", stole and "even killed people". Why would sparing a spider a single time grant him a chance of redemption? That isn't fair. Perhaps the morality of Rashōmon is supposed to weigh on us here- one should assume Kandata could have just been doing it to "survive". But does that grant him moral immunity? To what end do we apply morality, and where is it ok to ditch? Maybe as humans w
THEY'RE KIDS.
What?
THEY'RE CHILDREN. THE STORY IS BEING TOLD TO CHILDREN, ENA. IT'S SUPERFICIAL.
Oh. Right... this is a religious story. The immediate first line is "And now children, let me tell you a story," it's just. Meant to put the fear of god into them. It's telling the children that even in the best case scenario, you cannot be saved from hell. It's a story made up when a parent saw their kid lazering spider's in the garden with a magnifying glass.
But that's terrible. In this life, you have to kill spiders. This system of morality that the religion pushes here, where Kandata is saved for a single good deed in a life of bad ones, is a trap for children. It implies lives that are full of good deeds, where even a single sin damns them. It's designed to feed the us-vs-them mentality that underlies religion. There are the bad people in the hell, the gay people, the people who made you uncomfy, and the nice, clean and easy people in heaven. This is the milk and blood of fascism. It's what feeds it and keeps it alive. This teacher, or whoever is telling the story, probably got told the same one as a kid. It sucks. It all sucks. This is a particular strain of sadness, one that comes from the entrapment of a religious mindset. When someone tells you they are religious, don't try and debate them or change their mind. It's not like you have the right model of the universe either. No, when someone tells you they are religious, the only course of action is to feel bad for them. Feel bad they were conned. Empathise, where the scriptures do not.
Funnily enough, this text is actually about buddhism. Which I totally fuck with, and typically does not pull this Christian shit. It's like Akutagawa is saying not to invite these values into our interpretation of Buddhism. It is very important to emulate the qualities he had, instead of worshipping him. Worship leads to desire- the desire to please.
ENOUGH DILLY DALLYING. TIME FOR THE MAIN COURSE.