On Mr. Masao Kume
In this brief critical sketch, Ryunosuke Akutagawa offers a sharply compressed portrait of the writer Masao Kume. Rather than presenting Kume as either refined urban intellectual or naive provincial, Akutagawa describes him as a sensuous “countryman”: rustic in taste and temperament, yet exceptionally alert to color, atmosphere, freshness, and lyrical feeling. The piece turns on a paradox typical of Akutagawa’s criticism: what might appear to be a limitation becomes the source of artistic strength. Kume’s simplicity, sensuality, and faintly pleasure-loving disposition are treated not as incidental traits but as the very conditions that give his writing its distinctive texture. The final judgment is restrained but firm: Kume’s work may not appeal to everyone, yet his particular qualities are rare and unmistakably his own.
Kume is a countryman with keenly sharpened senses.
And I do not mean only in what he writes. Even in his tastes in actual life, there is much about him that is unmistakably rustic. Yet his sensuous perception alone has been formed far more acutely than that of any merely passable city dweller. If you think this is false, try reading Kume’s works. Things such as color and atmosphere are rendered with extraordinary vividness and extraordinary freshness. If one speaks of this point alone, there are probably not many in the literary world today who surpass Kume.
Of course, I do not mean that there is nothing good in those rustic qualities. No, one might even say that one side of Kume’s forte lies precisely there. His simple lyricism comes wholly from this countryman in him.
While I am at it, let me add one more qualification. Kume may be a countryman, but he is not just an ordinary countryman. To be sure, if asked what he is, I am a little at a loss; but let us say, at any rate, that within Kume’s rustic nature there is a considerable element of the pleasure-seeker. From that arises the voluptuous quality found in his work. In such respects he may remind one a little of Claudel, though of course, taken as a whole, he is not especially similar to him.
Those who are indifferent to qualities of this kind will probably find Kume’s work not at all interesting. But these qualities are by no means common or ordinary. Masao Kume is, after all, still Masao Kume.