Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was a Japanese writer active in the Taisho period, and he is regarded as the father of the Japanese short story. Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He drew on old Japanese tales, as in Rashomon, and on Western literature. He took his own life in 1927 at the age of thirty five. Tales Grotesque and Curious collects some of his stories in English.