In what is still the finest assessment of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's life and work, Howard Hibbett complained that for most, the author's name meant merely a collection of exotic, misanthropic stories, and that this ironist and superb stylist had had an ironic fate abroad. "He has been the most amply translated of modern Japanese writers, yet his work has been sadly diminished by both the hazards of translation and by the loss of a rich extraliterary context."
This is now amply remedied in Jay Rubin's most welcome edition. The renderings are what one expects from the exemplary translator of Natsume Soseki (fittingly, the author under whom Akutagawa studied).
And an unusually rich "extraliterary context" is provided. There is a biographical essay, translator's notes, chronology, bibliography with informations on other translations, as well as entries on Japanese name order and pronunciation, and unusually ample notes.
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