The Fog of Narration in the Bamboo Grove and the Non-existent "Truth"

A brief review of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's short story "In a Bamboo Grove"

Abstract

Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "In a Bamboo Grove" is a typical text for the study of "unreliable narration", with a novel and unique narrative structure composed entirely of the testimonies of four people and the confessions of three suspects. However, the overlapping of these seven layers of "first-person" narratives ultimately leads to the loss of "truth". Through "rhetorical method", "cognitive method" and the perspectives of "grammatical person", we can try to study the unreliability of the text, and then, through the heavy narrative mist in the bamboo grove, discover the "truth" that Ryunosuke Akutagawa intends to share with his readers through this complex narrative structure, namely his skepticism about human nature. This "skepticism" tendency of his stems from both personal trauma and the social factors of the time; it creates contradictions in his thoughts and also feeds his literary motifs.