Ryunosuke Akutagawa

(1892 - 1927)

Born in Tokyo in 1892, Ryunosuke Akutagawa was a student of English literature at Tokyo Imperial University when he published his short story “Rashomon,” which Akira Kurosawa would later adapt into a film of the same name. Impressed by the story, novelist Natsume Sōseki became a mentor, encouraging Akutagawa to undertake a series of modern reinterpretations of medieval Japanese folktales. Akutagawa died by suicide at the age of thirty-five in 1927.