Aoi Bungaku

Stories adapted

• No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai : The path of a man with intense feelings of alienation towards society and the feeling of "humanity".
• Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita, by Ango Sakaguchi : A forest bandit finds a beautiful maiden in the forest and takes her to be his wife, but she is more than she seems to be.
• Kokoro, by Natsume Sōseki : A young man lives in Tokyo as a renter with a widow and her daughter. He invites his childhood friend to come live with him, hoping to help him out of his depression. When his friend falls in love with the widow's daughter it drives a rift between them. The story is narrated twice from different points of view.
• Run, Melos!, by Osamu Dazai : A playwright writes a play based on the story "Run, Melos", and deals with his own feelings of betrayal towards his childhood friend.
• The Spider's Thread, by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa : Kandata, a cruel and evil bandit is executed and lands in hell. The one good thing he had done in his life was to not kill a spider he met in the city. The spider drops him a thread to climb up into heaven. His elation is short-lived, however, as he realizes that others have started climbing the thread behind him.
• Hell Screen, by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa : Yoshihide, the greatest painter in the country, is commissioned to draw his greatest work, an image of the king's country inside his mausoleum. In the despotic king's realm, Yoshihide can see nothing but the suffering of the commoners. He decides to make his last work a tribute to the country as it really is.

  Reception