Ryu ฬnosuke Akutagawa (1892โ1927), the โfather of the Japanese short story,โ produced hundreds of stories over the course of his brief and tortured writing career. Akutagawaโs work is marked by his profound knowledge of classical and contemporary literature from Japan, China, and the West. A strong autobiographical element also runs through much of his fiction. At the age of 35, Akutagawa died from an overdose of barbiturates, leaving behind a groundbreaking corpus of fiction.