Morrison

Study Guide: Akutagawa Rynosuke (1892-1927) Green Onions (Negi; 1919)

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*Translated by Jay Rubin; included in his Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories
(Penguin Classics, 2006). To purchase Rubins translation of the story, click here.

*To read the Aozora Bunko version of the original, click here.

Akutagawa Rynosuke (1892-1927): Novelist. Born in Tokyo. He
published Hana (The Nose) in 1916 while studying at the Tokyo Imperial University
and the start of his literary career was highly regarded by Natsume Sseki. After
graduation, he taught English as a part-time instructor at the Naval Engineering College
and published Imogayu (Yam Gruel) (1916), Hkynin no shi (Death of a
Christian) (1918), and Rashmon (1917), his first short story. After resigning from
the Naval Engineering College in 1919, he went full-time into literary activity as a staff
writer for the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun. In 1927, he committed suicide at the age of 36.
He was the father of Hiroshi Akutagawa and Yasushi Akutagawa. (National Diet
Library). (Click here for Aozora Bunko texts.)

Relevant Terms

*Realism: To represent life in literature. Realistic fiction is often opposed to romantic
fiction: the romance is said to present life as we would have it be, more picturesque,
more adventurous, more heroic than the actual; realism, to present an accurate imitation
of life as it is. . . . The realist sets out to write a fiction which will give the illusion that it
reflects life as it seems to the common reader. To achieve this effect he prefers as
protagonist an ordinary citizen of Middletown, living on Main Street, perhaps, and
engaged in the real estate business. The realist, in other words, is deliberately selective
in his material and prefers the average, the commonplace, and the everyday over the
rarer aspects of the contemporary scene. His characters, therefore, are usually of the
middle class or the working classpeople without highly exceptional endowments,
who live through ordinary experiences of childhood, adolescence, love, marriage,
parenthood, infidelity, and death; who find life rather dull and often unhappy, though it

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The story (Negi; ) was originally published in January 1920 in the literary
journal Shinshsetsu.
may be brightened by touches of beauty and joy. (Abrams. A Glossary of Literary
Terms, pp. 152-153)

*The Three Worlds of Narrative: Last week I talked about two narrative worlds: A)
story (storyworld) (inaccessible), B) narrative discourse (plot/mythos) (accessible). But
there is also a third world: C) world of production (e.g. in film, when the
camera/director are seen, etc.). In Negi:

A) story about O-kimi, O-matsu, Tanaka, etcthe storyworld they inhabit
B) events as related by semi-omniscient flying-ghost-like I
C) I of first paragraph; last paragraph

More Terms Related to This

*Self-conscious narrator: a narrator who shows that he is aware that he is composing a
work of fiction; who discusses the various problems involved in constructing his
fictional narrative; who thematizes the discrepancies between artifice and reality; etc.

*Narrative metalepsis: when borders between 3 worlds are broken. Examples in this
story: narrator-author talking about deadlines; referring to my own works; not making
it clear whether O-kimi really exists or is fictional; reference to O-kimis
future/well-being at endas if she were real (is she?).

*Roman clef (key novel; ): novel describing real life behind a faade of
fiction. Eg. Heres a little story I made up about a girl named (actually true). The key
is the mapping of characters to real-life models.

*Metafiction: fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the
fictional illusion. Green Onions story does this, only it turns this process around: the
narrator here acts as if his story is fictional; but we slowly realize/come to suspect that it
is real.

*Breaking the fourth wall: the fourth wall is imaginary wall separating audience from
reader; it is broken in this story (the narrator directly addresses audience, claims that his
story is fictional, etc.).

*Narcissistic Narratives: Linda Hutcheons term. A narrative that represents the process
of narration; mimesis of process rather than product; dramatic presentation of the
diegetic (narrative) act; mimesis of the diegetic.

Study Questions

1. Find passages that show the narrator to be a self-conscious narrator. Discuss the
effect of these passages on the story/your interpretation.

2. Make a list of facts about the narrator. Who is he? What is his social standing? How
does he tell the story?

3. What elements of the story reflect Romanticism? What elements reflect Realism?
Discuss how Realism and Romanticism intersect in this story.

4. Discuss O-Kimi (her life, her job, her personality, her proclivities, her tastes, her
environment, her dreams, etc.). What do her reading habits tell us about her? What does
the interior decoration of her room reveal about her? Her clothes/her hairstyle/etc?

5. Why does O-kimi look down on O-matsu?

6. Discuss Tanaka (his personality, motivations, tastes, status, etc.). What male
type/archetype/stock character is he an example of? Discuss his role in the story.

7. Make a list of all cultural/historical references that appear in the work (i.e. historical
figures, books, artists, actresses, works of art, place names, etc.).

Further Discussion Questions

1. In the world of the narrator, do O-kimi and Tanaka really exist? Or are they the
products of the narrators imagination? (Note: this is the crux question of work; our
interpretation of the work will vary depending on how we answer this question.) If the
characters are purely fictional products of the narrators imagination, how can we
explain the narrators obvious vested interest in the characters (particularly O-kimi)?

2. Assuming O-kimi does really exist in the narrators world, how does the narrator
know so much about her, her room, her life, her activities, her longings, etc?

3. Discuss the significance of the final paragraph:

I did it! I finished the story! The sun should be coming up any minute now. I hear
the chill-sounding crow of the rooster outside, but why do I feel depressed even
though I've managed to finish writing this? O-kimi made it back unscathed to her
room over the beauty parlor that night, but unless she stops waiting on tables at the
cafe, there's no saying she won't go out with Tanaka alone again. And when I think
of what might happen thenno, what happens then will happen then. No amount of
worrying on my part now is going to change anything. All right, that's it, Im going
to stop writing. Goodbye, O-kimi. Step out again tonight as you did last
nightgaily, bravelyto be vanquished by the critics! (Rubin, 129)

Is the last line the narrators admission that O-kimi is simply his fictional creation?

4. Discuss how the work thematizes the relation between fantasy/fiction and reality.
How does fantasy/fiction inform our perception of reality?

5. What symbols or metaphors can you identify in the work? Explain their significance.

6. Is my theory plausible?
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Pop Quiz

1. Arrange the following movements in the order that they occurred in Europe: realism,
enlightenment, modernism, symbolism, romanticism.

2. All narratives are comprised of two components. What are they? (Hint: narrative
discourse/events/action/ fabula/sjuzet/plot/story).

3. Identify and describe at least four characteristics of romanticism.

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My theory is that everything from p. 126 onfrom 6:00 onis imagined [wishful
thinking] by the narrator; and that, at the end of story, the date has yet to take place.