Kappa

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa · 1927

A mental patient recounts falling into the land of the kappa, a satirical underground society of water imps with poets, capitalists, and strange birth and death customs. His friendship with the poet Tok and the suicide that follows expose the despair beneath the absurdity.

Books mentioned in Kappa (1)

• Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: “This is Nietzsche, the poet of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. That saint sought salvation in the Superman he himself had created. But he was not saved after all, and went mad. [auto-translated]”