Mandarins

About

Fifteen stories, mostly set in the early twentieth century Akutagawa actually lived in — trains, newspapers, Western intellectual fashions seeping into Japanese daily life. A woman on a train peels tangerines and throws them to her brothers on the platform. A husband discovers enlightenment means something different than he thought. A disciple dies for his faith in sixteenth-century Nagasaki. This collection shows Akutagawa's realist side — the sharp observer of modern life rather than the gothic fabulist of "In a Grove." Three stories appear in English for the first time, including intimate domestic sketches that feel startlingly contemporary. Akutagawa called his aim "a useful melancholy." These stories deliver exactly that — sadness that clarifies rather than paralyzes.