The Story Archive

Kappa

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa · 1927 CE · Short Story · Japanese · Modernist

Patient number twenty-three of a mental hospital will tell anyone who sits still how he lost the path in the Hotaka mountains, gave chase through fog to a creature with a beak and a dish on its head, and fell through a hole into its country. Among the kappa a father asks the unborn child whether it wishes to exist, dismissed workers are quietly converted into food, and a poet is the only citizen who says anything true. Written in its author's last year.

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