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A review by louiza_read2live
Kappa by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
3.0
Before I read Kappa, I was familiar with Akutagawa's work because a few years back I had read his most well known short story Rashomon and the other stories that are included in that small collection of stories by said author. I had no doubt in my mind that Akutagawa is not an author I like. Nevertheless, I decided to give him another chance because I was very intrigued by his novella Kappa. Akutagawa will never be my favorite author, but Kappa was indeed very interesting and even fun at times. This book put my brain on a roller coaster. I still don't know how I feel about it, but I certainly loved the ending. I'll write more about it later as I plan to take some time to look back and write more detailed thoughts for every book I have read so far when I finish 40 books (That is when I finish one more book, as this book, Kappa, was the 39th book since January 2023).
For now, Kappas in the Japanese folklore are beings with frog's feet and arms, and a bird looking-like beak. According to Japanese folklore, Kappas catch toddlers and drown them in the river. In this story, we follow a madman who sees a Kappa and chase it down a hole. There, he lives with them in a parallel world and learns about their civilization and customs that seem to be the opposite of the Japanese society. He gets in some brief philosophical and political discussions, and eventually Patient 23, as we know him, goes back to live with the humans only to realize that he prefers to be with the Kappas and is disgusted by humanity. This caustic, and misanthropic we might say, satire was written in 1927. The author committed suicide shortly after. A couple other famous madman stories that we have in literature (among others) are The Diary of a Madman (1835) by the Russian author Nikolai Gogol, A Madman's Diary (1918) by the Chinese author Lu Xun who was influenced by Gogol, and of course, Fyodor Dostoyevsky has his share of madmen. Gogol, Lu xun, and Dostoyevsky are excellent! I wouldn't categorize Akutagawa's Kappa to that high status, but I'm not a book critic; it's just a personal opinion based on my reading taste, not an objectively professional critique of their works.
For now, Kappas in the Japanese folklore are beings with frog's feet and arms, and a bird looking-like beak. According to Japanese folklore, Kappas catch toddlers and drown them in the river. In this story, we follow a madman who sees a Kappa and chase it down a hole. There, he lives with them in a parallel world and learns about their civilization and customs that seem to be the opposite of the Japanese society. He gets in some brief philosophical and political discussions, and eventually Patient 23, as we know him, goes back to live with the humans only to realize that he prefers to be with the Kappas and is disgusted by humanity. This caustic, and misanthropic we might say, satire was written in 1927. The author committed suicide shortly after. A couple other famous madman stories that we have in literature (among others) are The Diary of a Madman (1835) by the Russian author Nikolai Gogol, A Madman's Diary (1918) by the Chinese author Lu Xun who was influenced by Gogol, and of course, Fyodor Dostoyevsky has his share of madmen. Gogol, Lu xun, and Dostoyevsky are excellent! I wouldn't categorize Akutagawa's Kappa to that high status, but I'm not a book critic; it's just a personal opinion based on my reading taste, not an objectively professional critique of their works.