Rashoumon and In a Grove

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

This ebook is complete with linked Table of Content making navigation quicker and easier.

"In a Grove" (藪の中, Yabu no Naka?) is a short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, first appearing in the January 1922 edition of the Japanese literature monthly Shinchō. Akira Kurosawa used this story as the basis for his award-winning movie Rashōmon.

"In a Grove" is an early modernist short story consisting of seven varying accounts of the murder of a samurai, Kanazawa no Takehiro, whose corpse has been found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto. Each section simultaneously clarifies and obfuscates what the reader knows about the murder, eventually creating a complex and contradictory vision of events that brings into question humanity's ability or willingness to perceive and transmit objective truth.

The story is often praised as being among the greatest in Japanese literature.

"Rashōmon" (Japanese: 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. Despite its name, it provided no direct plot material for the Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon (1950), which was based on Akutagawa's 1922 short story, "In a Grove". However, the framing sequence of the film reflects certain elements of the story, such as the theft of a kimono and the discussion of the moral ambiguity of thieving to survive.

From Wikipedia

Genres: Short Stories, Classics

Nook

First published January 14, 2010

About the author

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (芥川 龍之介) was one of the first prewar Japanese writers to achieve a wide foreign readership, partly because of his technical virtuosity, partly because his work seemed to represent imaginative fiction as opposed to the mundane accounts of the I-novelists of the time, partly because of his brilliant joining of traditional material to a modern sensibility, and partly because of film director Kurosawa Akira's masterful adaptation of two of his short stories for the screen.

Akutagawa was born in the Kyōbashi district Tokyo as the eldest son of a dairy operator named Shinbara Toshizō and his wife Fuku. He was named "Ryūnosuke" ("Dragon Offshoot") because he was born in the Year of the Dragon, in the Month of the Dragon, on the Day of the Dragon, and at the Hour of the Dragon (8 a.m.). Seven months after Akutagawa's birth, his mother went insane and he was adopted by her older brother, taking the Akutagawa family name. Despite the shadow this experience cast over Akutagawa's life, he benefited from the traditional literary atmosphere of his uncle's home, located in what had been the "downtown" section of Edo.

At school Akutagawa was an outstanding student, excelling in the Chinese classics. He entered the First High School in 1910, striking up relationships with such classmates as Kikuchi Kan, Kume Masao, Yamamoto Yūzō, and Tsuchiya Bunmei. Immersing himself in Western literature, he increasingly came to look for meaning in art rather than in life. In 1913, he entered Tokyo Imperial University, majoring in English literature. The next year, Akutagawa and his former high school friends revived the journal Shinshichō (New Currents of Thought), publishing translations of William Butler Yeats and Anatole France along with original works of their own. Akutagawa published the story Rashōmon in the magazine Teikoku bungaku (Imperial Literature) in 1915. The story, which went largely unnoticed, grew out of the egoism Akutagawa confronted after experiencing disappointment in love. The same year, Akutagawa started going to the meetings held every Thursday at the house of Natsume Sōseki, and thereafter considered himself Sōseki's disciple.

The lapsed Shinshichō was revived yet again in 1916, and Sōseki lavished praise on Akutagawa's story Hana (The Nose) when it appeared in the first issue of that magazine. After graduating from Tokyo University, Akutagawa earned a reputation as a highly skilled stylist whose stories reinterpreted classical works and historical incidents from a distinctly modern standpoint. His overriding themes became the ugliness of human egoism and the value of art, themes that received expression in a number of brilliant, tightly organized short stories conventionally categorized as Edo-mono (stories set in the Edo period), ōchō-mono (stories set in the Heian period), Kirishitan-mono (stories dealing with premodern Christians in Japan), and kaika-mono (stories of the early Meiji period). The Edo-mono include Gesaku zanmai (A Life Devoted to Gesaku, 1917) and Kareno-shō (Gleanings from a Withered Field, 1918); the ōchō-mono are perhaps best represented by Jigoku hen (Hell Screen, 1918); the Kirishitan-mono include Hokōnin no shi (The Death of a Christian, 1918), and kaika-mono include Butōkai(The Ball, 1920).

Akutagawa married Tsukamoto Fumiko in 1918 and the following year left his post as English instructor at the naval academy in Yokosuka, becoming an employee of the Mainichi Shinbun. This period was a productive one, as has already been noted, and the success of stories like Mikan (Mandarin Oranges, 1919) and Aki (Autumn, 1920) prompted him to turn his attention increasingly to modern materials. This, along with the introspection occasioned by growing health and nervous problems, resulted in a series of autobiographically-based stories known as Yasukichi-mono, after the name of the main character. Works such as Daidōji Shinsuke no hansei(The Early Life of

Reviews

[Tatiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In A Grove" is a much better story than "Rashomon," so I understand the hype only for one out of two.

[lille rev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two short but complex stories. Painfully dark

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rashomon and In A Grove are two of Akutagawa's most famous short stories. Kurosawa's famous movie was actually based on In A Grove, in which seven people tell the story of a rape and a murder. Each account is suspicious in its own way, and the last three stories are totally inconsistent with one another, with three different people taking responsibility for the death of a man (including the man himself). These last three accounts are particularly interesting to think about--why would a highwayman, the victim's wife, and the victim himself claim to have done the killing? Akutagawa illustrates the way that storytelling changes "reality"--we all have incentives to bend the truth.

Rashomon is the story of a servant who has recently been fired due to tough economic times in Kyoto. Rashomon is the gate to the west of the city, left in disrepair due to the hard times and now the dumping ground for unclaimed corpses. The servant must choose between honesty and starvation on one hand and thievery and survival on the other. His musings are interrupted by the presence of another person, an old woman who is pulling out the hair of the dead to sell as wigs. The servant confronts the woman, who justifies her act by saying that it is necessary for her survival. The servant responds by using the same rationalization to steal the woman's clothes and run off to the night, choosing to abandon morality in favor of survival.

I recommend these stories to pretty much everyone--they're really short and interesting.

[Erin]

"In a Grove" - 11/10/29
"Rashoumon" - 11/09/04

[Siddharth Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping and exceptional build-up of the story.