Book introduction

　This book discusses Akutagawa’s reception of foreign literature based on a survey of 844 books (mainly in English) of Akutagawa’s Western books kept at the Museum of Modern
Japanese Literature, the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Literature, and theKanagawa Museum of Modern Literature. It presents new facts based on empirical approaches from various angles, including Akutagawa’s reception of William Morris and Bernard Shaw, comparison of his masterpiece “Jigoken (Hell Screen)” and Pierre Louÿs’
“The Artist Triumphant”, letters and pressed flowers found in his old books, English anthologies (The Modern Series of English Literature, 8 vols.) edited by Akutagawa, stylistic theories, translations, and the manuscript of “Mother” held by the C.V. Starr Library, U.C. Berkeley, etc. Appendices include a list of the survey of his writings on 844 Western books in his collection and his reading chronology.