Ryunosuke Akutagawa

nd gold or silver-foiled wood piled up on the side of the road and sold as kindling. Needless to say, with the capital in this condition, there was no one to

The most spirited woman is defenseless without a weapon.

, you don't use your swords. You kill people with your power, with your money. Sometimes you kill them on the pretext of working for their good. It's true they don't bleed. They are in the best of health, but all the same you've killed them.

Kyoto: earthquakes, whirlwinds, fires and famines

A lowly servant, trapped by the rain, had nowhere to go, and didn't know what to do".

That's definitely true," the servant agreed derisively when she had finished speaking. He took a step forward and suddenly tore his right hand away from the pimple. Grabbing the woman by the scruff of the neck, he said to her in a biting tone:

"Well then, you won't hold it against me if I try to steal your clothes. If I don't, you see, I too will starve."

The servant deftly stripped the woman of her kimono. She tried to cling to his leg, but he kicked her violently onto the corpses. The entrance to the stairwell was a mere five paces away. In the blink of an eye, the servant ran down the steep staircase and into the darkness, carrying the dusky-red kimono under his arm.

I don't think what she did was immoral. If she hadn't done it, she would have starved to death, so, she just did what she had to. And this woman, who understood so well these things we have to do, would probably forgive me for what I'm doing to her too."

"Well then, you won't hold it against me if I try to steal your clothes. If I don't, you see, I too will starve."

Akutagawa, with his inborn quality of lofty detachment,

He was far too skeptical, far too individualistic, and far too intelligent ever to believe that he could become an effective intellectual spokesman for the working class