As far as translations go, I can offer few criticisms of Jay Rubin’s ordering and selection of short stories by the noted Japanese author Akutagawa Ryunosuke, (Japanese order) born March 1, 1892 committed suicide on July 24, 1927. If I were being nitpicky, I would posit that the wonderful little textual explanations Mr. Rubin provides, (which are included at in a long section of endnotes rather than in footnotes on each page), so that when coming across a citation that seemed interesting or necessary, I had to stop reading and go to the back of the book and search around for it, interrupting the story. Footnotes, akin to the kind I often find in fan translations of manga, are far more useful as I can simply glance down and read over the notes on a specific bit of translation or exposition on a historical or literary reference that is especially opaque to non-Japanese readers.
I cannot compare Rubin’s work to other translations as this is my first encounter with Akutagawa, but Rubin captures the mythical elegance and beautiful ambiguity of language that Akutagawa uses to great affect, and obviously brought an enormous amount of research and careful, dedicated work to the project.
Akutagawa Ryunosuke—pronounced Ak-ta-ga-wa Dyu-noss-ke—himself is an important author in the history of modern Japan’s “National Literature” if you will, and of course the namesake of Japan’s most sought after seal of literary approval, the one million yen Akutagawa Prize. In his introduction to the work, Murakami Haruki described Akutagawa’s importance thusly: “The writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke stands as an illuminating presence in the history of Japanese literature, a symbol of his age’s brief glory and quiet defeat” speaking of course of the brief lived, booming Taisho Democracy, which, amidst overcrowding, poverty, and economic downturn in the 1930s succumbed to nationalism and militarism which ended in Japan’s course of neo-imperialism in East Asia during World War II.
Jay Rubin’s translation consisted of the following stories, in the following, order (which is not chronological, but a stylistic decision on the part of the translator):
Rashomon
In a Bamboo Grove
The Nose
Dragon: The Old Potter's Tale
The Spider Thread
Hell Screen
Dr. Ogata Ryosai: Memorandum
O-Gin
Loyalty
The Story of a Head That Fell Off
Green Onions
Horse Legs
Daidoji Shinsuke: The Early Years
The Writer's Craft
The Baby's Sickness
Death Register
The Life of a Stupid Man
Spinning Gears