Rashomon and Other Stories

A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life.

Truly human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

The Heian Period (794–1185) was Japan’s classical era, a time of peace and opulence, when the imperial court in Heian-kyō (“Capital of Peace and Tranquility”: later Kyoto) was the fountainhead of culture, and the arts flourished. Toward the end, however, political power slipped from the aristocracy to the warrior class, the decline of the imperial court led to the decay of the capital, and peace gave way to unrest. This was the part of the Heian Period that interested Akutagawa, who identified it with fin-de-siècle Europe, and he symbolized the decay with the image of the crumbling Rashōmon gate that dominates his story. Director Kurosawa Akira borrowed Akutagawa’s gate and went him one better, picturing it as a truly disintegrating structure, entirely bereft of its Heian lacquer finish, and suggestive of the moral decay against which his characters struggle. His film Rashōmon (1950) was based on two of Akutagawa’s stories, “Rashōmon” and “In a Bamboo Grove.” Both—themselves based on tales from the twelfth century—reach far more skeptical conclusions than the film regarding the dependability of human nature and its potential for good. (Jay Rubin)

Pero le aclaro, señor, que yo mato con katana, y no como ustedes, que matan con el poder, con el dinero, hasta con el pretexto de hacer un favor. Es cierto que no derraman sangre y sus víctimas siguen viviendo; pero así y todo son muertos, sombras de vivos. Si medimos los alcances del delito, es muy difícil fijar quién es más criminal, yo o ustedes.

A servant of a samurai stood under the Rasho¯mon

Now, this writer whose name the word comes from—Masoch, you said?—are his novels any good?’ ‘No, they’re all terrible.’ ‘He must have been an interesting person, at least.’ ‘Masoch? Masoch was an idiot. He tried to convince his government to take money out of defense and put it into keeping whores.’ ...The business about whore support was far from certain, of course; Masoch probably believed in national defense as well.