Lexico-semantic Field of «Ugliness» in Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Works

Generally stated, the purpose of the proposed research project is to identify the lexico-semantic field of ugliness in works by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Lexico-sematic field is a group of words that have close meanings or regarded as linked. The problem of ugliness has drawn considerable interest among scholars and philosophers since the 19th century. The first author to introduce the topic was Rosenkranz (2015). However, it seems that previous approaches have been incomplete in defining the concept (Samohvalova, 2010). This research will adopt the Eco’s (2007) definition of ugliness as a synonym to “disgusting, nasty, detestable, weak, vile, repugnant, etc”. (Eco, 2007, p.16). Previous studies on Japanese aesthetics have focused primarily on beauty, while the issue of ugliness seems to be neglected. Therefore, in order to extend this line of research we will imply content analysis to create a lexico-semantic field and contrastive analysis of the Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s texts, in order to ring the objects that are considered ugly in Japan and that characterize the worldview of Ryunosuke. Due to the lack of sources, we do not attempt to address the universal definition of ugliness. We hope to contribute to knowledge of Japanese aesthetics. As a result, it was revealed that lexico-semantic field of ugliness of Ryunosuke is different from the field in Japanese, created in the work.