Rashomon and Other Stories - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Very tightly written and imaginative stories. I can certainly see how they influenced Murakami. The role of the narrator is very interesting. In some stories it's just a voice as is usual in modern third person fiction; in some it's an unnamed person who seems to have been present during the story's events; in some it's apparently a historian piecing the story together later; and in one it seems to be Akutagawa himself, admitting that it's fiction yet still approaching it as fact, telling it like it's a true story while writing as a fiction writer.