Akutagawa Ryunosuke
Pushkin Press
4 December 2025 (1927)
144
eBook - PDF
Modern Classics
ARC via NetGalley
In early 20th-century Japan, a lone hiker falls through a hole in the ground into Kappaland. This is a place ruled by amphibious creatures who share characteristics with tigers and turtles, but who, for all their strangeness, shed light on the human condition. In Kappaland children choose whether or not to be born, intellectuals think nothing of drinking themselves to death as part of a cultural demonstration, unemployed workers are saved the bother of supporting themselves by being turned into sandwich meat, and artistic rebels from the human realm are enshrined in the Great Tabernacle as saints. Gruesome as life is there in some ways, the Kappas are refreshingly honest about their practices, and it's a return to the world above that drives the narrator insane and sends him to the mental asylum.
Kappa was a delightful yet thought-provoking satire. It casts a critical eye over 1920s Japanese society and also comments on the nature of humanity itself: something obviously in the forefront of the author's mind so close as this book was written before his suicide. The story itself is less than 100 pages, but this edition also features and very interesting introduction to the the work and the author's life, which is worth reading before delving into the story. I am giving this one 4 stars.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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