#bsd 87

1. Giving Meaning to Death

Akutagawa’s origin is incredibly important to his character. The fact that he was orphaned and grew up alone in the slums has defined his whole life. His attitude towards both life and death comes from a place of knowing, practically his entire life, that he was most likely going to die a dog’s death in the slums, and nobody would even miss him or care when he was gone. 

His upbringing in the slums has clung to him his whole life, even in the form of the lung disease he acquired from breathing the terrible quality air. It’s not that Akutagawa was born believing that life is worthless, this is something he was taught. 

Not only has Akutagawa accepted the fact he was going to die young, he came to accept this fact when he was just a child. In his origin story he witnesses all of his friends he was surivving with die so easily, like their lives meant nothing at all. In response to this, Akutagawa tries to at least throw his life away and make his life mean something because he doesn’t want to be forgotten like that, to live miserable his entire life and die a miserable death. 

Akutagawa gets so attached to Dazai, because Dazai is the first person in his life, and not only a person but an authority figure, to even acknowledge Akutagawa. If he was going to die for no reason, then Dazai’s acknowledgement is something it’s a reason. 

What Akutagawa craves is a reason to keep on going, because so far for him life has been nothing but empty suffering. 

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

But, deep down what he wants is someone to tell him there’s more to life then just the bleak and empty existence in the slums. Not only that but, even someone like him born as a stray dog in the slums can live. He wants someone to tell him he can live, that there is something to live for, however, even if someone were to tell him that he probably wouldn’t be able to accept it. 

After all, even if he decides to live his lung disease is going to kill him in a few years. Even if he decides to live, he lives in the kill or be killed world of the mafia where his boss stops caring about his well being if he’s not useful.

Akutagawa wants to be told his life is worth something, but deep down he’s internalized the idea that it’s worth nothing. He wants to live but he’s come to accept death. 

All of Akutagawa’s harsher actions are in response to a harsh world. A world that has marked him for death. Even when he tries to reach out and help others, he doesn’t know how to show them how to live because he doesn’t know himself. The only way he knew how to make Kyouka survive was to turn her into a killer. 

This is one of the many things that Atsushi misunderstands about Akutagawa. Atsushi often sees Akutagawa as a bully, killing people to prove how strong he is, because he believes he’s bettern than others. (We get it Atsushi baby, you have an inferiority complex.) When Autagawa is someone barely able to survive in this world. It’s not that Akutagawa believes that Kyouka’s life was worthless, it’s that he believes his own life was worthless. 

And Akutagawa misunderstands something so simple, because it wasn’t told to him that he could live on his own. Because, the mafia, and even Dazai can keep him on a short leash if he’s continually fighting to live like a dog barking on the end of his chain. 

When Akutagawa does not see himself as powerful and respected, and he definitely does not see himself as secure in any way. He sees himself as frail, weak, always on the brink of death and desperately to prove his position and keep onto his standing in the world. It’s been made clear to him countless times because he was born a poor boy in the slums he’s not going to be given anything, he has to earn it. 

This is a recurring question asked about Akutagawa’s character. Is he struggling to survive, or is he preying on those weaker than him to secure his position in the world? I would say at least Akutagawa perceives it as the former. Deep down he views himself as weak and unworthy, so much so that no power he could possibly gain would ever be good enough. He views life as a compettition where he can die at any moment, and already having accepted his death, he goes all out against his opponents and expects his opponents to do the same to survive. However, Akutagawa is part of a predatory organization known as the port mafia, and the ideas that he’s inherited from that organization are all about the weak preying on the strong. 

When fighting against scarlet letter his own body breaks on him, before he’s even able to continue the fight, and once again he demands his opponent fight him with everything he has. He keeps insisting they fight even struggling to breath, coughing up blood, with his body falling apart on him. 

Akutagawa is a merciless killer, and yet he desires to live just like everybody else. He projects his own struggle onto everybody else as well, and believes they are all just like him, weak people struggling to survive even if that means eating others.That’s the paradox that’s always been at the center of his character, and there’s foiling with Dazai there. 

They have both lived their entire lives, shadowed by death, to the point where they’ve come to define themselves entirely around that idea. 

"Man fears death and yet, at the same time, man is drawn to death. Death is endlessly consumed by men in cities and in literature. It is a singular event in one's life that none may reverse. That is what I desire."

Akutagawa through his sickness and his life in the slums which has made it clear how worthless and cheap his own life is, and Dazai through his suicidal ideation and inability to relate to the others around him. 

“Even if one were to bathe in the enternal wind, and simply become foam in the great sea without ever knowing who they were - without even getting a farewell...” Akutagawa muttered facing the heavens as if he were reciting a poem, “... the heart shall not move, for it is nothing compared with the loneliness of passing... without you ever knowing.” 

Bungou Stray Dogs, 55 Minutes. 

However while Dazai’s tendency is to be alone, Akutagwa’s fear is one of dying alone, dying unacknowledged, dying unconnected to anybody in this world. Because it’s the death that’s been waiting for him his entire life. He was going to die a stranger that nobody cared about in the slums, and he’s been desperately fighting against that. He wants someone to know him. 

In other words Akutagawa can’t possibly live alone. In the most recent fight, Akutagawa confronts his own mortality again. This is another piece of yin and yang foiling between Akutagawa and Atsushi. Atsushi is young, full of life, and whenever he’s injured his injuries miraculously heal. 

Akutagawa is sickly, dying already of a lung disease, and no injury ever quite heals on his body, he just gets worse and worse. Atsushi only believes it’s okay for him to live if he saves people. Akutagawa is a dying man, struggling, to make his death mean something. 

Akutagawa already believes, already knows he’s going to die. How he’s going to live from this point on isn’t even a question to him. He never had a future in the first place. 

However at the same time, no one has told Akutagawa that he can live.  That he doesn’t have to earn it. That he’s worthy of living just by being born. 

At the beginning of this fight when Atsushi confronted what he was most afraid of, which was solitude, Akutagawa appeared to save him. Which is why now when Akutagawa is in jeapordy, facing his worst fear. 

Dying alone and unacknowledged.  It will be Atsushi’s turn to remind Akutagawa that they are not alone. That the two of them are both struggling to live together. Those words they both want to hear that even people like them can live in this world, that it’s okay for them to live,  is something they can tell each other.