"Rashomon" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1915)

One evening, a lone servant waited under the Rashomon Gate for the rain to stop. Under the vast gate, there was no one else but him. A single cricket clung to one of the large, partially faded red-lacquered pillars. Given that this gate was located along Suzaku Avenue, one might expect a few more people seeking shelter from the rain, wearing woven straw hats or crumpled silk headwear. Yet, he was alone.

This was due to the past few years of disasters that had struck Kyoto—earthquakes, whirlwinds, fires, and famines. The decline of the city was severe. According to old records, people broke apart Buddha statues and temple relics, stacking the gilded, painted wood along roadsides to be sold as firewood. With Kyoto in such a state, no one bothered to repair the Rashomon. Left to decay, the gate became a refuge for foxes and thieves. Eventually, it grew to be a place where unclaimed corpses were discarded. As night approached, people avoided going near the gate, spooked by its ghostly reputation.

In exchange, a multitude of crows gathered there. By day, they would circle in flocks, cawing as they flew around the high ridge tiles. When the sky above the gate turned red with sunset, the scene looked like specks of sesame scattered in the air. Naturally, the crows were there to peck at the flesh of the bodies left atop the gate. Today, however, no crows were in sight—perhaps due to the lateness of the hour. Only the white splatters of crow droppings stained the cracked and overgrown stone steps below.

The servant sat on the topmost of the seven steps, his worn indigo kimono spread beneath him, and absentmindedly gazed at the falling rain while absently touching a large pimple on his right cheek.

At first, I wrote that the servant was waiting for the rain to stop. However, even if the rain did cease, he had no real destination. Under normal circumstances, he would have returned to his master’s home, but he had been dismissed just four or five days prior. As I mentioned before, the city of Kyoto was in dire straits. This man’s dismissal was merely a minor ripple in the wave of decline. Thus, it was more accurate to say that he was “trapped by the rain, with nowhere to go and feeling at a loss.” Today’s weather, too, seemed to affect his Heian-era sentimentality. The rain, which began around the Hour of the Monkey, showed no sign of letting up. And so, the servant, trying to figure out how to get by tomorrow—or, more accurately, how to make do with what little he had—drifted through idle thoughts while he absentmindedly listened to the rain falling on Suzaku Avenue.

The rain enveloped Rashomon, bringing with it the distant sound of the downpour. Twilight gradually lowered the sky, and as the servant looked up, he saw the roof of the gate jutting diagonally into the darkening sky, supporting the weight of a heavy, ominous cloud.

To achieve the impossible, there’s no time to worry about choosing the right path. If he hesitates, he’ll simply starve to death by a dirt wall or on the roadside, discarded at this very gate like a dog. But if he chooses otherwise… The servant’s mind circles around the same thoughts repeatedly, ultimately arriving at this dilemma. He considers giving up on choosing “the right path,” yet he still lacks the courage to take the next step—that is, to actively decide that he has no other choice but to become a thief.

The servant gave a loud sneeze and then stood up, though reluctantly. Kyoto, in the evening chill, was cold enough to make him long for a brazier. The wind swept freely between the pillars of the gate, carrying the dusk with it. Even the cricket that had clung to the red-lacquered pillar had gone somewhere else.

Shrugging his neck to keep warm, the servant raised the shoulders of his blue jacket, layered over a faded yellow undergarment, and surveyed the area around the gate. He was searching for a spot where he could shelter from the wind and rain, somewhere that might allow him to spend the night unnoticed. Luckily, he spotted a wide red-lacquered ladder leading to the upper story of the gate. If there were anyone up there, it would likely be only corpses. Careful not to let the sword at his waist rattle, he placed a straw-sandaled foot on the bottom rung of the ladder.

Some moments later, the servant was halfway up the ladder, crouching like a cat and holding his breath, peering upward. A faint glow from above lit the right side of his face, highlighting a red, inflamed pimple amidst his short stubble. He had assumed that only corpses lay above, but as he climbed a few rungs, he realized that someone was moving a flame around. He knew this from the murky yellow light casting shifting shadows on the cobweb-covered ceiling above. Whoever was here, lighting a flame on a rainy night atop the Rashomon Gate, was certainly no ordinary person.

The servant, moving as silently as a gecko, finally crawled to the top of the ladder. He flattened his body and craned his neck forward, cautiously peeking inside the upper story.

There, in the dim light, just as the rumors described, lay several corpses strewn about without care. The light, dimmer than he expected, barely revealed their number. Yet he could see enough to tell that among them were both clothed and naked bodies. Men and women appeared to be mixed together, lying scattered on the floor like lifeless dolls made of clay, mouths open and arms stretched out. In the shadowy light, their figures seemed frozen in eternal silence, further obscured by the vague shadows cast by the flickering light on their shoulders and chests.

The stench of decay made the servant instinctively cover his nose, but within seconds he forgot about it. A powerful emotion had overwhelmed his sense of smell almost entirely.

The servant’s eyes finally focused on a living figure crouched among the corpses. It was an old woman, small and gaunt, with gray hair and the face of a monkey. She wore a faded, bark-colored kimono and held a burning pinewood stick in her right hand, peering closely at one of the bodies—a corpse with long hair, which suggested it was likely a woman.

Driven by a mix of 60% fear and 40% curiosity, the servant even forgot to breathe for a moment. Borrowing the words of an old chronicler, it felt as though “every hair on his body was standing on end.” Then, the old woman placed the burning pine stick between the floorboards and, gripping the corpse’s head in her hands, began to pull out the long strands of hair one by one, much like a mother monkey grooming her child for fleas. The hair seemed to come out easily in her grasp.

As each strand of hair was plucked, the servant’s fear gradually dissipated, replaced by a growing sense of intense hatred for the old woman—or rather, for all that was evil. At that moment, if someone had reminded him of his earlier dilemma—whether to starve or turn to theft—he would have chosen starvation without hesitation. His heart burned with an uncontainable rage against wickedness, like the flame of the pine stick the old woman had thrust into the floor.

Of course, the servant had no idea why she was pulling hair from a corpse. Rationally, he couldn’t categorize the act as good or evil, but to him, the mere fact that she was plucking hair from a corpse on a rainy night at the top of Rashomon Gate was an unforgivable crime. By now, he had entirely forgotten his own thoughts of becoming a thief.

Suddenly, he tensed his legs and leapt up from the ladder. Grasping the hilt of his sword, he strode with large steps toward the old woman. It goes without saying that she was startled. The moment she saw him, she jumped back as if flung by a catapult.

Even as she tried to push past him, he held her back, forcing her down. They wrestled silently among the corpses, though it was clear from the start who would win. At last, the servant grabbed the old woman’s bony arm and twisted it down, pinning her to the ground. Her arm was thin, nothing but skin and bones, like the leg of a chicken.

“What were you doing? Speak! If you don’t, I’ll make you regret it!” he demanded, releasing her and drawing his sword, thrusting the white steel in front of her eyes. But the old woman remained silent, her hands trembling, breathing heavily, her sharp eyes—predatory like those of a raptor—fixed on him. She pressed her lips, which were nearly merged with her nose due to deep wrinkles, as if chewing on something, and he could see the thin throat working around a prominent Adam’s apple. Finally, her voice came out in a rasping, crow-like croak.

“I was pulling this hair… pulling it to make a wig,” she confessed.

The servant felt disappointed by the banality of her answer. Along with his disappointment, his previous hatred returned, now tinged with a cold contempt. Sensing his disdain, the old woman continued in a muttering, almost froglike voice, still clutching a long strand of hair she had taken from the corpse.

“Yes, yes, plucking hair from the dead might be a wicked thing. But every corpse here deserves as much. The woman I was working on—she used to sell dried snake meat, cut into four-inch lengths, claiming it was dried fish. She sold it to the guards at the barracks. If she hadn’t died from illness, she’d probably still be selling it today. And they say her dried ‘fish’ was so tasty that the soldiers bought it from her without fail,” she explained, her voice bitter and wavering.

“I don’t think she did anything wrong. She would’ve starved otherwise. It was something she had to do. And in the same way, I don’t see what I was doing as wrong either. If I don’t do it, I’ll starve, too. That woman, at least, would understand and forgive me for this, knowing what it’s like to do what one must to survive.”

The old woman muttered this explanation, or something to this effect.

The servant listened coldly as he sheathed his sword and steadied its hilt with his left hand, while his right hand absently touched the inflamed pimple on his cheek. As he took in the old woman’s story, a new kind of courage began to rise within him—a courage he hadn’t possessed while waiting beneath the gate earlier. This courage, however, was of a very different kind than the one that had driven him to confront the old woman. Now, the idea of starving to death was so far from his mind that it was no longer even conceivable.

“I see,” he murmured, as if mocking her, after the old woman finished her tale. Then he stepped forward, suddenly releasing his hand from the pimple and grabbing the old woman by her collar, his voice filled with a biting tone.

“Well then, you can’t blame me for doing the same. If I don’t, I’ll starve to death myself.”

With swift movements, he stripped the old woman of her kimono. As she tried to cling to his legs, he kicked her roughly onto the pile of corpses. The ladder was only five steps away. Clutching the bark-colored kimono under his arm, the servant descended the steep ladder in an instant, vanishing into the depths of the night.

Shortly after, the old woman, who had been lying motionless as if dead, began to crawl to the top of the ladder. Groaning and mumbling, she dragged herself to the edge, using the faint glow from the still-burning pine stick to guide her. She peered down from the top of the gate, her sparse white hair hanging over her face. Outside, there was only the pitch-black expanse of night.

No one ever knew where the servant went after that.