Abstract:

Akutagawa Ryunosuke's novel, The General, the first of his anti-war series in his late years, was an elaborated description of Japanese troops' suicide squads and their blindness, rare option and madness, in contrast with the anti-Japanese Chinese people with noble minds who were calm and unyielding in defense of justice, and even faced death unflinchingly.All this was uttered at the time when Japanese militarism was still growing and at the center of Japan's native land, by the Japanese novelist Akutagawa Ryunosuke.His anti-war awareness was opposed to Fukuzawa Yukichi's thought of singing praises of war.Judging from this novel alone, Akutagawa Ryunosuke can be regarded as a keen-sighted, sincere, anti-militarist idol writer in modern Japanese literature.

Key words: Akutagawa Ryunosuke, anti-war, modern Japanese literature, Fukuzawa Yukichi