Rashomon

author: Ryunosuke Akutagawa

It was the late afternoon of a certain day. A lone servant was waiting for the rain to stop under the Rashomon gate.

Besides this man, there was no one under the wide gate. Only a single cricket was perched on one of the large, round pillars, where the vermilion paint had peeled off in places. Given that Rashomon was on Suzaku Avenue, there should have been two or three other people waiting for the rain to stop, wearing sedge hats and soft headgear. Yet, besides this man, there was no one.

The reason was that, for the past two or three years, disasters such as earthquakes, whirlwinds, fires, and famines had continuously occurred in Kyoto. As a result, the desolation of the capital was extraordinary. According to old records, people had smashed Buddhist statues and implements and piled up the wood, which had traces of vermilion paint or gold and silver foil, along the roadside to sell as firewood. Since the capital was in such a state, no one, of course, gave a second thought to repairing the Rashomon gate. Taking advantage of its ruined condition, foxes and tanuki had begun to live there. Thieves also inhabited it. Finally, a custom even developed of bringing unclaimed corpses to the gate and abandoning them there. Consequently, when daylight faded, everyone felt uneasy and avoided going near the gate.

Instead, crows gathered in large numbers from somewhere. When one looked during the day, countless crows could be seen circling the high decorative roof finials, crying as they flew around. Especially when the sky above the gate turned red at sunset, they could be seen clearly, like sprinkled sesame seeds. The crows, of course, came to peck at the flesh of the corpses on the gate. – However, perhaps because it was late in the day, not a single one could be seen today. Only, here and there, on the crumbling stone steps where long grass grew in the cracks, the white stains of crow droppings were visible. The servant, sitting with the hem of his washed-out dark blue kimono on the top step of the seven steps, absentmindedly gazed at the falling rain, preoccupied with a large pimple on his right cheek.

The author wrote earlier that “the servant was waiting for the rain to stop.” However, even if the rain stopped, the servant had no particular place to go. Normally, he would, of course, return to his master's house. However, his master had dismissed him four or five days ago. As mentioned before, the town of Kyoto was in a state of extreme decline at the time. The fact that this servant was dismissed by his master, whom he had served for many years, was, in fact, nothing more than a minor ripple of this decline. Therefore, rather than saying “the servant was waiting for the rain to stop,” it would be more accurate to say, “the servant, trapped by the rain, had nowhere to go and was at a loss.” Moreover, the day's weather also had no small effect on this Heian-era servant's sentimentality. The rain, which had begun falling after the hour of the monkey, showed no sign of stopping. Therefore, the servant, trying to somehow manage his living for tomorrow – or rather, trying to somehow manage what was unmanageable – listened to the sound of the rain falling on Suzaku Avenue, without really hearing it, as he drifted through aimless thoughts.

The rain enveloped Rashomon, gathering the sound of “zaa” from afar. The evening darkness gradually lowered in the sky, and when he looked up, the roof of the gate, at the tips of the diagonally protruding tiles, seemed to be supporting heavy, dim clouds.

In order to do something about the unmanageable, one did not have the leisure to choose means. If one were to choose, one would simply starve to death under a mud wall or on the dirt of the roadside. And then, one would simply be brought up to this gate and abandoned like a dog. If one were not to choose – after wandering through the same path of thought many times, the servant finally arrived at this point. However, this “if one were to” remained just that, “if one were to,” no matter how long he pondered. Even while affirming that he would not choose his means, the servant lacked the courage to actively affirm what should logically follow: “There is no other way than to become a thief,” in order to settle this “if one were to.”

The servant sneezed loudly, and then, with a weary air, stood up. Kyoto, with its evening chill, was already cold enough to make one want a brazier. The wind blew freely through the space between the gate's pillars, along with the evening darkness. The cricket that had been on the vermilion pillar had also gone somewhere.

The servant, hunching his neck, raised the shoulders of his dark blue kimono, layered over a yellow-brown unlined garment, and looked around the gate. If there were a place where he could sleep comfortably for the night, free from the worry of rain and wind, and not exposed to the eyes of others, he thought he would somehow spend the night there. Then, fortunately, he noticed a wide, vermilion-painted ladder leading up to the gate's loft. Up there, even if there were people, they would only be corpses anyway. Thereupon, while being careful not to let the sacred hilt of the sword at his waist slip out of its sheath, the servant placed his straw-sandaled foot on the bottom rung of the ladder.

Some minutes later, on the middle of the wide ladder that led to the top of Rashomon, a man was crouching like a cat, holding his breath, while peering at the situation above. The light from a fire coming from the top of the loft faintly illuminated the right cheek of this man. It was a cheek with a red, pus-filled pimple amongst its short beard. From the beginning, the servant had assumed that those above were all corpses. However, as he climbed two or three steps of the ladder, he saw that someone was lighting a fire above, and that the fire seemed to be moving from place to place. He quickly realized this, as the muddy, yellow light was reflecting, swaying, on the cobweb-covered ceiling in the corners. On this rainy night, someone who was lighting a fire on top of Rashomon was definitely no ordinary person.

The servant, moving as silently as a gecko, finally crawled up the steep ladder to the top step. Then, keeping his body as flat as possible, and extending his neck as far forward as possible, he cautiously peered into the loft.

Inside the loft, as the rumors had said, several corpses were carelessly abandoned, but because the area illuminated by the fire was smaller than he had imagined, he couldn't tell exactly how many there were. However, what he could vaguely discern was that some of the corpses were naked, and some were clothed. Of course, there seemed to be both women and men mixed in. And all of the corpses, so much so that one doubted even the fact that they were once living humans, were lying scattered on the floor like clay dolls, with their mouths open or their hands outstretched. And, with the firelight dimly illuminating the raised parts of their shoulders or chests, intensifying the shadows of the lower parts, they remained eternally silent, as if they were mute.

The servant involuntarily covered his nose because of the putrid odor of the rotting corpses. However, in the next instant, his hand had already forgotten about covering his nose. A strong emotion had almost completely robbed the man of his sense of smell.

At that moment, the servant’s eyes saw for the first time a human being crouching amongst the corpses. It was a hunched-over, short, thin, white-haired old woman, like a monkey, wearing a cypress-bark colored kimono. The old woman was holding a lit pine splinter in her right hand and peering at the face of one of the corpses, as if she were examining it. Judging by the length of its hair, it was probably a woman’s corpse.

Moved by six parts fear and four parts curiosity, the servant had even forgotten to breathe for a moment. Borrowing the words of the chronicler, he felt as if “the hair on his body stood on end.” Then, the old woman inserted the pine splinter into a gap in the floorboards, and then, putting both her hands on the neck of the corpse she had been examining, began to pull out its long hair, one strand at a time, just like a mother monkey grooming lice from her child. The hair seemed to come out easily in her hands.

As each strand of hair was pulled out, the fear gradually receded from the servant's heart. And at the same time, an intense hatred towards this old woman gradually stirred. – No, perhaps it would be a misstatement to say it was towards this old woman. Rather, it was a revulsion towards all evil that grew stronger by the minute. At this moment, if someone had presented the servant again with the question he had been pondering under the gate just a while ago – whether to starve to death or become a thief – the servant would probably have chosen to starve to death without any hesitation. Such was the fervor of his hatred for evil, which was now blazing like the pine splinter the old woman had stuck into the floorboards.

The servant, of course, did not know why the old woman was pulling out the hair of the dead. Therefore, logically, he did not know whether to categorize it as good or evil. However, for the servant, the very act of pulling out the hair of a dead person on top of Rashomon on this rainy night was already an unforgivable evil. Of course, the servant had long forgotten that, until just a while ago, he had been considering becoming a thief himself.

Therefore, the servant put strength into both his legs and suddenly leaped up from the ladder. Then, placing his hand on the sacred hilt of his sword, he strode towards the old woman. It goes without saying that the old woman was surprised.

The old woman, the moment she saw the servant, leaped up as if she had been shot by a crossbow.

“You, where do you think you are going?”

The servant blocked the path of the old woman, who was stumbling over the corpses as she tried to flee in panic, and shouted at her. The old woman still tried to push past the servant. The servant, not allowing her to pass, pushed her back. The two of them grappled in silence for a while, amongst the corpses. However, the outcome was clear from the start. The servant finally grabbed the old woman’s arm and forcibly twisted her down to the ground. It was an arm that was just skin and bones, like the leg of a chicken.

“What were you doing? Speak! If you don’t speak, I’ll do this to you!”

The servant released the old woman, and then, suddenly drawing his sword from its sheath, thrust the white steel before her eyes. However, the old woman remained silent. Her hands trembled, and she was gasping for breath, while her eyes were wide open, as if her eyeballs would pop out of their sockets, stubbornly silent like a mute. Seeing this, the servant realized clearly for the first time that the old woman’s life or death was completely under his control. And this realization, before he knew it, had cooled the anger that had been blazing fiercely. What remained was only a tranquil sense of triumph and satisfaction at having completed a task successfully. Therefore, the servant, looking down at the old woman, said, softening his voice slightly, “I am not an official of the Office of the Police Commissioners. I am a traveler who just happened to pass under this gate. Therefore, I am not going to tie you up and do anything to you. However, what were you doing on this gate at this hour? Just tell me that.”

“You, where do you think you are going?”

Then, the old woman widened her eyes further and stared intently at the servant’s face. She looked with sharp eyes, like a bird of prey, her eyelids red. Then, she moved her lips, which were so wrinkled that they were almost one with her nose, as if she were chewing something. Her thin throat and pointed Adam’s apple could be seen moving. At that moment, from her throat, a voice like the cry of a crow reached the servant’s ears, panting and wheezing.

“I was pulling out this hair, yes, pulling out this hair, because I wanted to make a wig.”

The servant was disappointed that the old woman's answer was surprisingly ordinary. And as he was disappointed, the previous anger, together with a chilling contempt, came into his heart again. Then, that change of mood must have also been felt by the other party. The old woman, still holding the long strands of hair she had taken from the corpse’s head in one hand, said, while stammering in a croaking voice, something like this.

“Indeed, pulling the hair of a dead person might be a very bad thing to do. But, all the dead here are people who deserve to have such things done to them. Now, the woman whose hair I just pulled out, she would cut snakes into four-inch pieces, dry them, and sell them to the Tachi-waki garrison, calling them dried fish. If she hadn’t died of the plague, she’d probably still be selling them now. And also, the dried fish this woman sold were said to have a good flavor, so the Tachi-waki men would buy them as a side dish without fail. I don’t think what this woman did was wrong. She did it out of necessity because she’d have starved to death otherwise. Therefore, I don’t think what I’m doing now is wrong either. This is also something I have to do out of necessity, because I’d starve to death otherwise. So, this woman, who knew well that she had no other choice, would probably be lenient towards what I’m doing.”

The old woman said something along these lines.

The servant, putting his sword back into its sheath, and holding the hilt of the sword with his left hand, listened to this story coldly. Of course, with his right hand, he was preoccupied with the large, pus-filled pimple on his red cheek as he listened. However, as he listened to this, a certain courage was born in the servant's heart. It was a courage that the man had been lacking under the gate earlier. And it was a courage that was moving in a completely opposite direction from the courage he had when he climbed up to this gate and captured the old woman. The servant not only did not hesitate between starving to death and becoming a thief, but judging by the feelings of the man at that time, the idea of starving to death had been pushed so far out of his consciousness that it was almost unimaginable.

“Is that really so?”

When the old woman finished her story, the servant pressed her for confirmation in a mocking tone. Then, taking a step forward, he suddenly moved his right hand away from the pimple, grabbed the old woman by the collar, and said as if he were biting her, “Then you won’t resent me for robbing you, will you? I too have to do it or I will starve to death.”

“Then, I will not be angry with you for stripping me bare since I too will starve to death if I don't.”

The servant quickly stripped off the old woman's clothes. Then, he kicked the old woman, who was trying to cling to his legs, roughly onto the corpses. The mouth of the ladder was only about five steps away. The servant, carrying the stripped cypress-bark colored kimono under his arm, quickly ran down the steep ladder into the darkness of the night.

It was not long after that the old woman, who had been lying motionless as if dead, raised her naked body from among the corpses. While making a muttering, moaning sound, the old woman crawled to the mouth of the ladder, using the still-burning fire as a guide. And from there, with her short white hair pointing downwards, she peered out from under the gate. Outside, there was only the pitch-black night.

No one knows where the servant went.

(September, Year 4 of the Taisho Era)

Source: “Ryunosuke Akutagawa Complete Works 1,” Chikuma Bunko, Chikuma Shobo

First printing published September 24, 1986 (Showa 61)

14th printing published April 15, 1997 (Heisei 9)

Original source: "Chikuma Complete Collection of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Volume 1", Chikuma Shobo

First edition, first printing published March 5, 1971 (Showa 46)

First appearance: "Teikoku Bungaku"

November 1915 (Taisho 4) issue

*Footnotes by the editor of the source text have been omitted.

Input: Makoto Hirayama, Eiji Noguchi

Proofreading: Morimitsu Junji

Published October 29, 1997

Revised July 16, 2022

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