- Short Stories
Yukio Mishima considered ‘The Handkerchief’ by Ryunosuke Akutagawa to be the ultimate Japanese short story[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]
Japan has an incredible history of short-form fiction that is as rich as it is diverse. There is everything here from verse to the modern short story. Going back to the 10th century, Japanese readers have been captivated by tales of time-travel and shape-shifting and Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), who one of Japan’s most important literary prizes is named after, is considered the father of the modern Japanese short story.
The modern short story arrived in Japan relatively late, in 1890, some time after most other countries. It is generally agreed that the first one written was ‘Maihime‘ (The Dancing Girl) by Ogai Mori (1862-1922). And its impact on both Japanese readers and writers was not insignificant. Many Japanese authors including some of the nation’s most able are fans of the short story format.
‘It is,’ Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), one of Japan’s most notorious authors, said in a talk he gave in English: ‘a sort of, four round match for green boy in boxing. If he can fight four rounds, he can fight five rounds, six rounds, and more and more.’ In other words, if you can take the criticism and the knocks and stay on your feet you have a potential writing career ahead of you.
According to Donald Keene, one of his translators and a highly regarded professor of Japan literature, Mishima thought that Akutagawa’s The Handkerchief, hankachi, was the ultimate Japanese short story.
The story, which has the following opening line: “Hasegawa Kinzo, professor in the Faculty of Law at Tokyo Imperial University, was sitting in a rattan chair on the veranda, reading Stringberg’s Dramturgy”, was published in 1916 inChuokoron – an influential monthly magazine that is now one of Japan’s oldest continuously published magazines.
The Handkerchief is a story replete with cynicism about a Japanese professor of colonial policy married to an American woman who loves Japanese culture, and the narrative concerns itself with the struggle of modernization.
The professor is said to be modeled on the celebrated international statesman Inazo Nitobe (1862-1933) and a criticism of his book Bushido: The Soul of Japan published in 1900.
Akutagawa is, however, best known outside Japan for his first published short story In a Grove, which cleverly employs multiple narrative viewpoints in the form of witness statements of a single crime, a rape – giving the impression that reality is never what it first seems.
This story’s unique multi-perspective structure and ambiguous narrative was unlike most typical translated Western stories available at the time in Japan. Readers of In a Grove are left totally unsure as to the true outcome of this intriguing but compact tale. An authentic reflection perhaps of the real world in which the true nature of things cannot always be readily determined.
The award-winning film Rashomon based on Akutagawa’s story directed by Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), who was an avid reader, introduced similar techniques to the world of cinematic storytelling. Akutagawa, also wrote many other brilliant short stories including, for example, The Hell Screen, ‘Kappa’ and The Life of a Holy Fool.
An English translation of The Handkerchief can be found within the collection The beautiful and the Grotesque republished by Liveright in 2010.
- TOPICS:
- Educational
- Short Stories
