Akutagawa Ryunosuke, a modern Japanese author of the Taishō era, recounts the murder of a man through seven different peoples' accounts, one of them including the dead man himself, in his short story "In a Bamboo Grove." In Ryunosuke's story, he questions the way in which the truth can vary based on the perspectives of others. He makes the reader question absolute truth and certainty with the differing accounts from the seven witnesses. After the story is finished and the reader has read everyone's testimonies, including the dead man's spirit, the reader is still unsure as to who committed the murder.
Ryunosuke committed suicide at the age of 35. Growing up, his mother suffered from a terrible mental illness and passed away when he was only ten years old. He later admitted that he was terrified that he would inherit the same mental illness. I feel as though it is safe to assume that he did concerning his untimely death brought on by his own means. When his mother passed away, he moved in with his uncle on his mother's side where he was well-educated and encouraged to read and pursue a passion for literature. He was well-read in a lot of Japanese and Chinese classics as well as some European authors. At the age of 21 he entered Tokyo Imperial University where his works quickly made an appearance in campus literary magazines.
Ryunosuke's "In a Bamboo Grove" reflects the world at the times through the detective novel genre. Many Japanese modernists were pushing the language and its narrative in a new and unexplored direction with their shifting points of view, use of more concrete and solid prose-style writing, and perceptions of the senses. Japanese modernists were pushing the confines of the fiction genre in ways that had not really been explored before. Each witness seems to say at least one thing that is then refuted by another witness', making the reader question the accuracy of each individual's testimony.
