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unwaveringly preserve our own identity, we must exchange that which can be exchanged and understand that which can be mutually understood. Our role is perfectly clear.
    Upon reflection, it seems to me that my departure point as a novelist may be rather close to the position adopted by Akutagawa. Like him, I leaned heavily in the direction of modernism at first, and I half-intentionally wrote from a stand point of direct confrontation with the mainstream I-novel style. I, too, sought to create my own fictional world with a style that provisionally rejected realism. (In contrast to Akutagawa’s day, though, we now have the handy concept of post-modernism.) I also learned most of my technique from foreign literature. Unlike him, however, I am basically a novelist rather than a short-story writer, and after a certain point I went on to actively construct my own original storytelling system. I also live an entirely different kind of life. Emotionally, though, I continue to be drawn to several of the best works that Akutagawa left us.
    To be sure, I have not modeled my fictional world on his. This is not to say that one approach is right and the other wrong. Such simplistic comparisons are both impossible and meaningless. We live in different eras, our personalities are different, we grew up in different circumstances, and our aims are (as far as I can tell) different. All I want to say is that I—and probably most of Akutagawa’s readers—learn a great deal from his works and from the vivid traces of his life, and wecontinue to draw from them as we move on through our own lives. In other words, Akutagawa Ry Å« nosuke still lives and functions in actuality as a “national writer” of ours. He lives on as an immovable fixed point in Japanese literature, as a part of our shared intellectual foundation.
    Finally, I would like to commend the translator for his efforts in producing this book. From among Akutagawa’s numerous short stories he has chosen several of the undisputed masterpieces and several highly interesting lesser works (most of which have not been translated into English before), assembled them into four apposite categories, and translated them with great accuracy while conveying the spirit of the originals. This has been done with a level of attention to detail that bespeaks a warm enthusiasm for Akutagawa’s works and assured literary judgment. I can only hope that this book inspires a new appreciation for Akutagawa abroad.
    Murakami Haruki
    NOTES
    1 . On the list with Akutagawa would be such figures as Natsume S ō seki (1867–1916), Mori ō gai (1862–1922), Shimazaki T ō son (1872–1943), Shiga Naoya (1883–1971), Tanizaki Jun’ichir ō (1886–1965), and the 1968 Nobel Prizewinner Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972). Less certain of a place might be Dazai Osamu (1909–48) and Mishima Yukio (1925–70). S ō seki would unquestionably come out at the top. This totals only nine; I can’t think of a good candidate for tenth place.
    2 . Natsume S ō seki,
Botchan
, tr. J. Cohn (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2005). On his name, see Chronology, note 2 .
    3 . Shiga Naoya, “The Shopboy’s God” (“Koz ō no kamisama”), tr. Lane Dunlop, in
The Paper Door and Other Stories by Shiga Naoya
(San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987), and Kawabata Yasunari, “The Dancing Girl of Izu” (“Izu no odoriko”), tr. J. Martin Holman, in
The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories
(Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998).
    4 .
Tanka
is the dominant verse form through most of Japaneseliterary history, written in five lines of 5-7-5-7- 7 syllabic structure.
    5 . Mori Ō gai, “The Dancing Girl” (“Maihime”), tr. Richard Bowring, in
Mori ō gai: Youth and Other St
ories, ed. J. Thomas Rimer (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), and “San sh ō the Steward” (“Sansh ō Day ū