Review of ​Rashomon and Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

​Rashomon and Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa is a collection of six short stories focusing on the lives of samurai, priests, and pre-war Japan. The first, ‘In a Grove’, is about a murder of a man, told through interviews with a police officer, some of them witnesses, the suspect, the wife, and finally the dead man through a medium. On three of the accounts, all of the speakers describe themselves as the killer, all with differing motives. The truth is never revealed, though provides a look at how the world can be viewed differently even if everyone witnesses the same thing. The second story, ‘Rashomon’, tells the story of a hungry samurai who would never resort to becoming a thief, but when he sees a woman pulling hair out of corpses at the top of a gate, he steals everything she owns. Another interesting story is, ‘The Martyr’, in which an orphan is raised by a church, but his duty to the church is questioned when a girl says she is having his child. The orphan is then excommunicated, becomes a beggar, and only when the town burns down does he save the daughter people think different about him. However, the fire burned him so badly he dies by the feet of the girl, where it is revealed the orphan was actually a girl. And finally, the last story, ‘The Dragon’, follows a priest who decides to play a trick on the other priests because they make fun of his nose. He decides to make up the fact that a dragon will ascend to heaven from the pond. From this rumor, everyone from the town as well as the surrounding areas gather to see the dragon, although he knows it to be a lie. However, it turns out a dragon does ascend to heaven and the priest is left wondering if it actually happened.
 
This collection of stories was fascinating, not only in the stories themselves, but how they are framed. One takes the form of interview monologues, another adds an imagined post script, and another frames the story inside of another story. It was a fun read, especially, ‘The Dragon’, in which Akutagawa displays how lies can manifest themselves into being.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5