Short story rashomon by ryunosuke akutagawa

1915 short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Rashōmon (羅生門) is a short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa based on tales from the Konjaku Monogatarishū.

The story was first published in 1915 in Teikoku Bungaku.

Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon (1950) is in fact based primarily on another of Akutagawa's short stories, "In a Grove"; only the film's title and some of the material for the frame scenes, such as the theft of a kimono and the discussion of the moral ambiguity of thieving to survive, are borrowed from "Rashōmon".

Plot summary

The story recounts the encounter between a servant and an old woman in the dilapidated Rashōmon, the southern gate of the then-ruined city of Kyoto, where unclaimed corpses were sometimes dumped.

Short story rashomon by ryunosuke akutagawa pdf

The current name of the gate in the story, but not the plot, comes from the Noh play Rashōmon (c. 1420).

The man, a lowly servant recently fired, is contemplating whether to starve to death or to become a thief to survive in