Heredity, environment, chance – Akutagawa

Heredity, environment, chance — these three govern our fates.

~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

In college I discovered a two-volume edition of Ryunosuke Akutagawa translated into Russian. His stories were so different from everything else I had known before that I reread the collection twice. A few things stuck in my head, including the above quote.

At some point I attempted to create its visual representation: apple tree for “heredity,” fish tank for “environment,” dice for “chance.”