A FOOL'S LIFE by Akutagawa Ryunosuke with etchings by Tanaka Ryohei

Mushinsha / Grossman, 1970, First edition, 135 pp., 7 1/2" X 10 1/2", Hardcover

Very good with some general rubbing and wear yo dj, including a 1/2" chip to top middle front and a corresponding bump to top of front boards. A touch of foxing to top of text block. (See photos)

One of 20th Japan's great storytellers. He is best known in the West for his two stories Rashomon and Within a Grove, being the basis of Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon.

Akutagawa read widely in world literature. He graduated from Tokyo University with a thesis on William Morris. His mentor was the great novelist Natsume Soseki, who had lived in London at the turn of the century.

Akutagawa's writings include reworkings of motifs and tales of China's and Japan's past, modern fables, essays, and a few autobiographical fictions which, like A Fool's Life, follow his intense engagement and difficulty within the world. He ended his brief life the month after completing A Fool's Life.

Quite scarce in this early edition