Further Interpretation of the Anti War Consciousness in Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "General"

Abstract

The Akutagawa Ryunosuke Award, set in honor of the first-class Japanese literary master Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927), is not only the top award in the Japanese Pure Literature Award, but also the most authoritative one in the Japanese literary field. This indicates the position of Ryunosuke Akutagawa in the history of Japanese literature. Studying Ryunosuke Akutagawa's war novels undoubtedly has inspiring meaning for us to understand Japan's war novels. Therefore, based on previous studies, the researcher discusses "General", the first masterpiece in a series of works criticizing Japan's aggressive war after Akutagawa went to China. On the basis of the overall dynamic research method currently advocated, this paper attempts to explore the anti-war consciousness in "General" through detailed reading of the text. The main body of this article is divided into three parts. The first part sorts out the background of "General", summarizes the entire whole text and the main idea. The second part is to study the Japanese during the war. Japanese soldiers strongly admire the Mikado, and Japan has a strict hierarchical system, which are all exploited by extreme militarists. The third part analyzes the anti war consciousness and the foolish loyalty of Japanese soldiers in four independent and meaningful works, namely "The White Army", "Spy", "Performance on the Field", and "Father and Son".