Institutions are hollowed out. The people are angry, anxious, distracted, or docile. Foreign military adventures go awry. Those soldiers return with an ax to grind. Rogues seize positions with violence and appoint their own.
These new authorities isolate, fool, pick off, and crucify dissenters. Authorities use them to show their power and prevent open resistance. Authorities then go after open resisters with that much more vengeance: they wouldn’t learn their lesson.
If solidarity against the authorities is not possible, what use is art anyway? You hear a buzz at the door, open it, and pick up a cardboard box with daily rations for those in lockdown. You eat the beans, hard boiled egg, and bread. The smog clogs the city. Outside the window are clouds of tear gas, yells, a few thuds, and then the yells went quiet.
You sit on the bed, look at the couple of remaining books there, and wonder: isn’t art to change you or events outside?
Or maybe art serves as a salve and direction for a troubled consciousness. Didn’t remembering Basho from school, and imagining the Milky Way stretching across the night sky, distract you from the pain of the gun to the teeth and the body bruises after the attack?
Akutagawa’s work is not political. But how can he avoid the rapid change in his country? Did this change affect his work like Soseki’s? Or did he have another solution? You incinerate the film strips as agreed, unbox the next box with brown stripes, and unspool the next section on this author.