Rashomon

At its core, “Rashōmon” is a story about morality. Both the servant and the old woman represent the complex relationship humans have with morality, particularly within the framework of survival. Akutagawa’s modernist tendencies show most clearly as he examines the thought processes of the servant and the old woman when they consider their actions as moral or corrupt.

As a former servant of the samurai, the servant is assumed to be well versed in bushidō. Though he is not a samurai himself, he is expected to have a strong moral code, acting with righteousness, respect, courage, and honesty. Faced with starvation, the servant has a choice: He can cling to his moral code and die honorably, or he can abandon it and survive as a thief. Initially, the servant is unable to reconcile the thought of stealing with his moral code; he feels he lacks the “courage” to abandon his ideals in favor of survival. However, there are early signs that the servant is not quite as morally upright as he appears. The biggest one is the pimple on his cheek; it symbolizes the inner corruption he can’t suppress or resist. Additionally, he is positioned beneath the Rashōmon gate, home to bandits and amoral wildlife. Lastly, the servant does not give any consideration to alternative honest means of survival—he does not consider finding a different kind of work, nor does he consider, for example, selling his sword. In some ways, these are reflections of his society at large; the decaying state of Kyoto means there are likely few honest jobs to be found, and the servant could have many reasons for holding onto his sword, such as sentimentality or personal safety. Nonetheless, it is telling that Akutagawa does not show him considering further alternatives: He is only willing to consider thievery as an alternative to death.

Over the course of the story, the servant’s morality shifts back and forth. At first, he is caught in the middle and openly torn. When he encounters the old woman, someone performing an act that is, from his perspective, unforgivably evil, he is vaulted so thoroughly to the side of morality that he forgets he was ever close to abandoning his code in the first place. He convinces himself that the idea of stealing to survive is unfathomable, that he would never stoop to the old woman’s level and would gladly die instead. After the old woman introduces him to the idea that it’s okay to behave immorally for survival, especially against other immoral people, the servant immediately turns to moral corruption, robbing her, mocking her, and disappearing into the night. This rapid oscillation is not only proof that the servant was never strictly bound to his moral code; it also shows the general fluidity of human morality.

Where the servant represents the journey of one’s changing moral perspective, the old woman represents gray morality. She has been a thief long enough that she is comfortable justifying her behavior, but not so long that she has totally discarded the ideals of a civil society. She acknowledges her own wrongdoing and preempts the servant’s protests with her justifications; similarly, she is stealing from the corpses on a dark, rainy night, where few people are likely to catch her. In part, this is because no one is likely to buy her wigs if they know where the hair comes from; however, it is also evidence of lingering shame. Still, the old woman is the mouthpiece for the idea that morality is a social construct—that it is possible, and even okay, to set it aside in favor of surviving. She even claims that the dead woman from whom she is stealing would understand her logic, implying that those living in poverty have their own social code of conduct: That there is a tacit understanding that people behave in certain ways to survive, and it is not a poor reflection of their character. According to the old woman’s logic, morality is a matter of perspective.

The dead woman represents a full commitment to moral corruption for the sake of survival. The old woman claims that, were she still alive, the dead woman would still be selling dried snake as fish in order to survive. The old woman implies that the dead woman fully understood the necessity of acting on survival, rather than morality; the dead woman is also unable to provide any further context or nuance to her own mindset. It is also ironic that, despite her best efforts, she died anyway—not of starvation, but of the plague. This, on top of the way her body is abandoned at the tower, symbolizes the moral degradation of her body and soul.

The story ends with the servant’s decision to embrace moral corruption. Rather than a gradual decline, however, the servant’s behavior shifts abruptly. This is where Akutagawa’s foreshadowing comes into play; all the indications that the servant was already morally corrupt spring to light as soon as he turns on the old woman. Once again, he does not consider any alternatives—he immediately leaps to robbing the only other living person in his vicinity, someone who cannot fight back against him. Ironically, the servant uses the old woman’s logic to justify his own behavior. He says as much out loud, mocking her, as he is well aware that she did not intend for him to turn her reasoning back on her; however, this is also a reflection of his own mental state. Because he views the old woman as immoral, he sees his own actions as fully justified. His mocking tone also indicates that he is not robbing her purely for survival; he is doing it partly to expose her hypocrisy.

Akutagawa brings the servant’s mindset full circle at the end of the book, stating that, after hearing the old woman’s justifications, the servant completely forgets that he was willing to die for the sake of his morals. This is the final illustration of how easily a person’s morality can twist and bend, and how quickly one can excuse themselves from any sense of wrongdoing.