Ill Fortune
“Ill Fortune” is a brief autobiographical prose piece in which Akutagawa records a series of uncanny incidents that he retrospectively interprets as ominous signs. Set across several years in the Taisho era, the piece moves through dim Tokyo streets, a quiet road in Karuizawa, and a dinner gathering among literary acquaintances. Each episode is presented with deceptive simplicity, yet together they accumulate an atmosphere of dread: a funeral car glimpsed twice, the vision of hanging legs in a tree, and a strange double reflected in a beer bottle. The work is especially haunting because of its documentary tone and because it was fair-copied only months before Akutagawa’s death, giving these moments the force of forebodings rather than mere coincidences.
In the winter of 1923 (?), I got into a taxi somewhere or other and was heading down Hongo Street from beside the First Higher School toward Aizome Bridge. That street had very few lamps and was always dark. There was another automobile there as well, driving ahead of my taxi. As I held a cigarette in my mouth, I naturally paid it no attention. But as we gradually drew closer to it, and as my taxi’s headlights dimly lit it up, I saw that it was a funeral car, adorned with golden arabesques.
In the summer of 1924, I was walking along a narrow road in Karuizawa with Muro Saisei. The mountain sand was damp with moisture, and evening had fallen with an air of perfect stillness. While talking with Muro, I happened to glance up above our heads. Overhead, black acacia branches stretched across the clear sky. And between the forked branches, there hung two human legs. I cried out, “Ah!” and started running. Muro, too, came chasing after me, calling, “What is it? What is it?” I was a little embarrassed, so I made some excuse and covered it up.
In the summer of 1925, I was dining at a restaurant in Tsukiji with Kan Kikuchi, Masao Kume, Soichi Uemura, the president of Nakayama Taiyodo, and others. I was seated in front of the decorative alcove post, with Masao Kume on my right and Kan Kikuchi on my left, and so on in that order. At some point, by chance, I looked at a beer bottle on the tray. In that beer bottle I saw a human face reflected. It looked exactly like my own face. Yet the bottle was not merely reflecting my face. Proof of that was that, although my actual self had my eyes open, the phantom self had its eyes closed and its face tilted slightly upward. I turned to the geisha sitting beside me and said, “There’s a strange face reflected there.” At first the geisha took it as a joke. But the moment she sat down in my place, she said, “Oh, it really does show up.” Kikuchi and Kume also came one after the other and sat in my place to look, saying to each other, “Yes, I can see it.” According to Kume’s discovery, it was a reflection from the finger bowl or something placed beyond the beer bottle. Even so, I could not help feeling it was an evil omen.
On January 10, 1926, I was again riding in a taxi and heading down Hongo Street from beside the First Higher School toward Aizome Bridge. Then that same funeral car with the arabesque ornamentation appeared once more ahead of my taxi, its rear dimly emerging in the darkness. Until that moment, I had not thought the several phenomena mentioned above were connected with one another. But when I saw this automobile, and especially when I saw the coffin inside it, I distinctly felt that something was giving me a warning from within the dark unknown.
(Fair-copied at Kugenuma, April 13, 1926) [Posthumous manuscript]