Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was a Japanese short story writer, novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, journalist, and screenwriter who worked in both the Japanese and English languages during the early twentieth century.

Born in Tokyo on March 1, 1892, Akutagawa was educated at the University of Tokyo. He wrote under the art name Chōkōdō Shujin and produced a body of work that drew on multiple literary forms throughout his career. Among the works he completed were the short stories Rashōmon, The Nose, The Spider's Thread, Hell Screen, and In a Grove, titles that span the range of his output as a prose writer.

Akutagawa's death came on July 24, 1927, in Tabata, when he took his own life through an overdose of barbital at the age of 35. He had been born thirty-five years earlier in the same city in which he built his literary career, and his death marked the close of a concentrated period of creative activity that had encompassed fiction, poetry, criticism, and journalism. The circumstances of his death drew considerable attention in Japan and contributed to the lasting significance attached to his name in the country's literary culture.

He is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story," a designation that reflects his sustained engagement with the short fiction form across his working life. Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named in his honor, making his name a continuing presence in the recognition of Japanese literature. His recurring territory was the short story, a form he pursued alongside his work as a novelist, poet, and critic, and it is in that genre that his name has remained most closely anchored.