｢歯車｣小考Ⅰ

A Study on The Toothed Wheel : The World of Symbolism

The Toothed Wheel, a six-chapter work by Akutagawa Ryunoske,was published posthumously on October 1, 1927, in the October issue of Bunkei Shyunshu (volume5). This particular work is considered the last novel that entombs Akutagawa's meticulous plot and heralds his imminent suicide and thus shows the spirit of the writer undaunted by death. Put succinctly,it begins with scenes at the writer's resort home, goes through his stay in Tokyo, and ends in his return to his permanent home. Unlike the contemporary novels based primarily on a meshed network of everyday episodes, this novel presents a series of episodes at face value, vividly expressing the author's desperate feelings which ultimately lead to death. One distinctive feature of this work can be found in symbolic uses of language and color. Originating from the author's wish to represent his spiritual world through mundane content, this rich symbolism makes it difficult for the readers to make sense of what the author had in mind. In this study, an attempt is made to analyze the writer's symbolism by means of peripheral information about the author and other works by the same author and thus to come closer to the writer's feelings leading to his death. The symbolic expressions in The Toothed Wheel are categorized in to three types: harmony between East and West, the author's guilt consciousness and his pains of hell, and his destined acceptance ofdeath, all of which help explain the ultimate death of Akutagawa.