芥川龍之介/Ryunosuke Akutagawa
芥川龍之介（Ryunosuke Akutagawa 1892—1927），日本小說家，素有“鬼才”之稱。他閱讀的書籍涉獵極廣，中小學時代就喜讀閱讀江戶時代的文學作品，還喜歡閱讀《西遊記》和《水滸傳》等。芥川早期發表了短篇小說《羅生門》（1915）、《鼻子》（1916）、《芋粥》（1916）、《手帕》（1916）由此確立了他在寫作領域的地位。自1917年至1923年，龍之介所寫的短篇小說先後6次結集出版，分別以《羅生門》、《煙草與魔鬼》、《傀儡師》、《影燈籠》、《夜來花》和《春服》為書名，這些優秀作品讓芥川龍之介成為日本文壇的“鬼才”大師。
It was a chilly evening. A servant of a samurai stood under the Rashomon, waiting for a break in the rain.
No one else was under the wide gate. On the thick column, its crimson lacquer rubbed off here and there, perched a cricket. Since the Rashomon stands on Sujaku Avenue, a few other people at least, in sedge hat or noblemans headgear, might have been expected to be waiting there for a break in the rain storm. But no one was near except this man.
For the past few years the city of Kyoto had been visited by a series of calamities, earthquakes, whirlwinds, and fires, and Kyoto had been greatly devastated. Old chronicles say that broken pieces of Buddhist images and other Buddhist objects, with their lacquer, gold, or silver leaf worn off, were heaped up on roadsides to be sold as frewood. Such being the state of affairs in Kyoto, the repair of the Rashomon was out of the question. Taking advantage of the devastation, foxes and other wild aninals made their dens in the ruins of the gate, and thieves and robbers found a home there too. Eventually it became customary to bring unclaimed corpses to this gate and abandon them. After dark it was so ghostly that no one dared approach.
Flocks of crows flew in from somewhere. During the daytime these cawing birds circled round the ridgepole of the gate. When the sky overhead turned red in the afterlight of the departed sun, they looked like so many grains of sesame fung across the gate. But on that not a crow was to be seen, perhaps because of the lateness of the hour. Here and there the stone steps, beginning to crumble, and with rank grass growing in their crevices, were dotted with the white droppings of crows. The servant, in a worn blue kimono, sat on the seventh and highest step, vacantly watching the rain. His attention was drawn to a large pimple irritating his right cheek.