Books like Kappa

A patient in a mental hospital tells anyone who will listen his story of chasing a Kappa in the woods, when he fell down a hole and landed in Kappaland, a parallel world to the one above. And, by the way, friends he made in Kappaland come back to visit him nightly.What’s a Kappa? It’s a scaly, amphibious human-like mythical creature in Japanese culture. Kappas are small, so the furniture and houses the man visits makes him feels like he is in a nursery. Things that we take seriously, like death, the Kappas find humorous. Females chase the males. Baby Kappas have to agree to be born; they can walk and talk from birth. Some are born old and reverse age through life. Some have homosexual experiences; some drink themselves to death. Their parallel world has a parallel culture to ours with art, music and literature. The unemployed are killed and eaten to save them the bother of committing suicide. They war against the Otters. They have the same major religions we do but the one followed by most people is ‘Viverism’ which simply means “to live” as in the sense of “eating rice, drinking wine and having sex.” Kappa suicides come back in a paranormal Q & A session where they ask questions such as how is my child? and what’s happened to my house?So we have a satire of Japanese society and culture. Capitalism, politics, art, music, literature, and even family structure all get their shots from the author. Art censorship in Kappaland is “more progressive than that in Japan.” A new book of philosophy is called “Words of the Fool.” The philosopher states that “the ideas essential to our livelihood were burnt out three thousand years ago. No doubt all that we do is add new flames to old faggots.” And, by the way, the ink they use in their books is made from “ass-brain.” But saying this short book is a satire of Japanese culture is just the start. We are told in the introduction that the author “had come to regard life as a shabby and despicable affair that could only achieve any sort of beauty when refined and polished by art.” So one interpretation of Kappa is that it is not just a parody making fun of art and politics but a parody of humanity: a misanthrope’s feeling of revulsion and disgust for human society that was fundamentally evil. This misanthropic view was the author’s final verdict on life while he was ill, in pain, and on opium shortly before his suicide in 1927 at age 35. He joined the long list of Japanese male authors who took their life. All his life he had feared inheriting insanity which ran in his family. He also got into ghosts and the paranormal. He suffered from schizophrenia and had feelings of persecution, hallucinations and déjà vécu experiences -- where he felt he had lived through his life before and current events were all a repeat of past experiences. Akutagawa has been called the “father of the Japanese short story.” And Kappa is short – about 95 pages, so the paperback is pumped up with a 40-page introduction about the story, the author’s life and his other works. One of Japan's two premier literary awards, the Akutagawa Prize, is named in his honor. It’s an interesting read – kind of like putting Jonathan Swift, Alice’s rabbit hole and Coleridge’s opium into a blender and pressing 'puree.'Top image from jpninfo.comPhoto of the author from wikipedia