Kappa (novel)  Kappa (河童 "Kappa") is a 1927 novella written by the Japanese author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. The story is narrated by a psychiatric patient who claims to have travelled to the land of the "kappa", a creature from Japanese mythology. Critical opinion has often been divided between those who regard it as a biting satire of Taishō Japan and those who see it as expression of Akutagawa's private agony. A psychiatric patient, who is known only as "Number 23", tells the story of a time he visited the land of the kappa. He had lost his way in the mountains of Hotakadake and was surrounded by a group of the strange creatures, who then showed him around their home. He found that the world of the kappa often appeared to be the opposite of how things were in the human world. For instance, foetuses are asked by their fathers whether or not they want to be born. One replied, "I do not wish to be born. In the first place, it makes me shudder to think of all the things I shall inherit from my father — the insanity alone is bad enough." The psychiatric patient relates how he met with kappa of many occupations. One of them, Geeru, told him that unemployed laborers are gassed and then eaten by the other kappa. Patient 23 also encountered Maggu, a philosopher writing a collection of aphorisms titled "The Words of a Fool", which included the line "a fool always considers others fools". He met another kappa called Tokku, a sceptical poet who had committed suicide and appeared to Patient 23 as a ghost by means of necromancy. Tokku, while concerned about being famous after his death, admires writers and philosophers who have killed themselves, such as Heinrich von Kleist, Philipp Mainländer and Otto Weininger. He esteems Michel de Montaigne who justified voluntary death, but dislikes Arthur Schopenhauer because he was a pessimist who did not commit suicide. On his return to the real world, Patient 23 muses that the kappa were clean and superior to human society and becomes a misanthrope. When it was first published, many Japanese reviewers saw it as an unsophisticated social satire that lacked insight. Since then, critics in Japan have often been divided between those who regard it as a satire of Taishō Japan, and those who see it as an expression of Akutaguwa's personal agony.