Rashomon

Rashomon is a short story by the Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke, published in 1915 in the literary magazine Teikoku Bungaku and based on a tale drawn from the twelfth-century Japanese anthology Konjaku Monogatarishu. Set at the ruined Rashomon gate in Kyoto during a time of famine and civil disorder, the story follows a recently dismissed servant who, sheltering in the gate's upper story and contemplating whether to turn to theft to survive, discovers an old woman pulling hair from the corpses left there to sell as wigs; her justification that the dead she robs were themselves wrongdoers in life persuades the servant to abandon his hesitation and rob her in turn before vanishing into the night. The story is widely read as an exploration of moral relativism and the ethical compromises desperation forces on people who would otherwise consider themselves upright. It remains a staple of Japanese school curricula, and although Akira Kurosawa's celebrated 1950 film Rashomon borrowed its title and framing device, that film's narrative is drawn primarily from a different Akutagawa story, In a Grove.