Rashomon

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1915

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Character Analysis

The Servant of the Samurai

The protagonist of Rashōmon is a former servant of a samurai household who was recently let go due to Kyoto’s overall “decline.” The former servant is never given a name and readers are given very limited information about him. He wears a blue kimono, carries a sword with a bare hilt, and has a large pimple on his right cheek that he repeatedly fusses with throughout the story.

The servant is representative of all three major themes of the story. His dire circumstances are a direct result and reflection of Japanese Socioeconomics and Post-Feudal Poverty that could be seen in Akutagawa’s era, even though the story takes place long before the Meiji and Taisho Periods. He struggles with Morality and Moral Corruption as he searches for a Means of Survival that does not clash with his inner ideas of “right” and “wrong,” torn between starvation and a life of crime. Akutagawa uses modernist writing techniques within the framework of a classical setting as he explores the servant’s psychological journey from a man considering death by starvation to a man who remorselessly robs an old woman and disappears into the night.

The servant initially seems like a morally upright person. He cannot convince himself to become a thief, even though he has no other prospects. He is seized with revulsion when he spots the old woman taking hair from a corpse, and he leaps into action to stop this “evil” behavior. When she stops, he speaks kindly to her, promising not to turn her into the authorities. All of these actions point to a man who wants to uphold a code of honor and who will stick to his moral ideals. However, once the old woman justifies her theft as her Means of Survival, the servant’s mindset and behavior immediately change. He reveals his festering core of corruption and turns the old woman’s words against her, insisting that she should understand that robbing her is his own way of surviving. Through the servant, Akutagawa showcases the flexibility of human morality; the servant takes the first opportunity he gets to act in his own self-interest without guilt. The story ends with the servant vanishing into the darkness, his fate unknown.

The Old Woman

The unnamed old woman is a narrative foil to the servant. A similar symbol of Kyoto’s rampant poverty, the old woman represents someone who has already chosen survival over morality, and found a means of justifying it. She is described primarily through animal comparisons: pulling out hairs like a monkey, speaking with a voice like a crow, with thin arms akin to chicken feet. This symbolizes her heightened survival instincts in the absence of moral values.

When the servant confronts her, the old woman is quick to acknowledge the wrongness of her actions, showing that although she has clearly lived in poverty for some time, she has not forgotten the moral structures within greater society. However, she is also quick to justify her behavior. She first claims that stealing the dead woman’s hair is acceptable because the dead woman was also an immoral person. Then, she insists that neither the dead woman nor herself ought to be viewed poorly, because they were, and are, simply trying to survive. This introduces the idea that morality can be put aside when it comes to surviving. The old woman claims that the dead woman would not have blamed her for stealing her hair, because she would have understood the old woman’s reasoning—a “circle of life” moment.

Akutagawa never makes it clear if the old woman truly believes her own logic, or if she is simply trying to appeal to the servant’s kindness. Either way, however, her words ironically backfire on her. The servant seizes her justification for himself, claiming that, by her own logic, she should not hold it against him when he steals her clothing for his own livelihood. The old woman tries to fight him off, indicating inner hypocrisy—or at least an awareness that there are limits to her logic. However, she is unable to resist him, and she is left naked at the top of the tower, looking into the darkness after the servant. Like the servant, the old woman’s ultimate fate is unclear.

The Dead Woman

Though she is already dead, and thus not truly present in the story, the dead woman from whom the old woman steals hair is an important aspect of the story. According to the old woman, this woman with long black hair was a merchant who would cut and sell dried snake flesh to the city guards, claiming that it was dried fish. Had the woman not died of the plague, the old woman claims that she would still be selling it. The fact that the dead woman’s hair is black and beautiful indicates that she died young.

The dead woman represents a full commitment to survival, as there is no indication that the dead woman was troubled by an inner moral code. While the old woman is clearly painting a biased perspective, the narrator does not describe the dead woman beyond her hair, which limits readers to viewing the dead woman through their own personal perspectives and the old woman’s narrative. It is also ironic that the woman died despite her commitment to survival. Instead, her actions merely began a chain reaction of justifying immoral deeds in the name of survival.

It is also notable that the dead woman’s corpse was, like many others, abandoned at the gate. Akutagawa uses this to further symbolize Kyoto’s state of decay. Japanese burials have long been highly ritualized affairs, closely tied to Shinto and Buddhist beliefs of defilement, purification, and spirituality. Many taboos in Japanese culture stem from the Japanese perspective of death and the afterlife. The fact that the dead woman’s corpse was abandoned at the gate, instead of receiving a proper burial, symbolizes the spiritual death and defilement of Kyoto as a whole; Akutagawa’s Kyoto in Rashōmon, which cannot even care for its dead, is lost.