About Mr. Haruo Sato
In four pointed observations, Akutagawa defines Haruo Sato first and last as a poet, defending the primacy of poetic feeling in Sato’s fiction with wit, paradox, and an unforgettable contrast between pumpkins and konnyaku.
1. Haruo Sato is a poet—before anything else, a poet. One might even say: before anyone else.
2. It follows that the distinctive quality of his work lies in its poetry. A person who reads Sato’s works without seeking poetry is like someone who buys konnyaku while intending to eat pumpkin. There can be no chance of satisfaction. To remain unsatisfied and then complain that what one has bought is not pumpkin is folly in the extreme. One would do better to go away and seek a pumpkin somewhere beyond India.
3. Among Sato’s works there are some that offer moral admonition, and others that embody philosophy; yet the color cast over their thought is always a current of poetic feeling. So long as that poetic feeling is satisfied, Sato will no more shrink from revering General Nogi than he will hesitate to beat Oishi Kuranosuke to death. One may fairly say that within Sato’s single person dwell both a Buddha of poetry and a demon of poetry.
4. Sato’s poetic sensibility seems closest to what is commonly called the poetry of the fin de siècle. It is delicate and graceful, yet capable of embracing a dim, elusive beauty. The same is true of Rural Melancholy and of Okinu and Her Siblings; indeed, it is true of them all. If we call this a rarity of our age, can anyone who refuses to assent be anything but a person wholly devoted to pumpkins?