30 pages • 1 hour read
Ryūnosuke AkutagawaA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“This was because Kyoto had been struck by one calamity after another in recent years—earthquakes, whirlwinds, fires, famine—leading to the capital’s extraordinary decline.”
The description of the series of disasters Kyoto has faced contextualizes the overall state of the city, setting a grim tone. Akutagawa uses the setting of the dilapidated city to reflect not only the poor economic state of Japan, but also the moral decay he will explore later in the story. This description also provides context for why the characters in the story have turned to (or are considering) criminal acts.
“Old records tell us that people would smash Buddhist statues and other devotional gear, pile the pieces by the roadside with flecks of paint and gold and silver foil still clinging to them, and sell them as firewood.”
The imagery of the broken pieces of Buddhist images reflects the expulsion of Buddhism in Japan. The lack of respect for once-treasured religious objects shows a shift in priority—the people have no time for devotion when they must make ends meet. This also reflects the lack of morality present in Akutagawa’s Kyoto.
“And when the sky above the gate turned red after sunset, the crows stood out against it like a scattering of sesame seeds. They came to the upper chamber of the gate to peck the flesh of the dead. Today, however, with the late hour, there were no crows to be seen. The only sign of them was their white droppings on the gate’s crumbling steps, where long weeds sprouted from cracks between the stones.”
Crows are a common symbol in Japan. Historically, they have long been associated with the Shinto deity Yatagarasu, the crow god who served as a guiding figure. Thus, crows are typically associated with good luck, divine guidance, and other positive things. This makes Akutagawa’s depiction of them subversive: He portrays them with extreme realism, showing them pecking at corpses and spending time around the dirty, decaying Rashōmon gate. This is another symbol of the moral decline of Kyoto. Their absence, thus, symbolizes an absence of divinity as well as a sign of lifelessness; there is nothing left at the gate for the moment, not even carrion for scavengers.
“Ordinarily, of course, he would have returned to his master’s house, but he had been dismissed from service some days before, and (as also noted earlier), Kyoto was in an unusual state of decline.”
This quote sets up the theme of Japanese Socioeconomics and Post-Feudal Poverty. Though the story takes place in the pre-Meiji Period, the servant’s dismissal reflects the loss of power among the samurai class that occurred shortly before Akutagawa was born. The decline of the city parallels the decline of the elite military of Japan and along with it, their nobility and values. The aside in parentheses is also a reflection of Akutagawa’s literary style: The omniscient narrator speaks directly to the reader.
“The rain carried a host of roaring sounds from afar as it came to envelop the Rashōmon.”
This line carries multiple meanings. From a broad perspective, the “host of roaring sounds from afar” alludes to the arrival of Westerners and Western influence that swept over Japan during Akutagawa’s time. In the context of the story directly, it is an expansion of the symbolism of the rain; it is paired with oppressive, all-encompassing darkness to set the grim tone of the story, and it represents encroaching thoughts of Morality and Moral Corruption that weigh the servant down.
“If he hesitated, he would end up starving to death against an earthen wall or in the roadside dirt. […] But if he was ready to do anything at all—His thoughts wandered the same path again and again, always arriving at the same destination. But no matter how much time passed, the ‘if’ remained an ‘if.’”
The servant contemplates the looming question that hangs over the story: whether he will choose honest means and starve, or turn to thievery. Although he attempts to rationalize stealing in his mind, he returns to the conclusion that if he does so, he will be a thief. His need for a Means of Survival does not yet outweigh his inner sense of morality.
“Firelight from above cast a dim glow on the man’s right cheek—a cheek inflamed with a pus-filled pimple amid the hairs of a short beard.”
The festering pimple is a symbol of Moral Corruption. It is a sign that, no matter how much the servant previously appeared to dither over survival versus righteousness, the servant was always morally corrupt. Just as he cannot leave the pimple alone, so too is he incapable of delving into the immorality that festers inside of him.
“Each time a hair gave way, a little of the man’s fear disappeared, to be replaced by an increasingly violent loathing for the old woman. No, this could be misleading: he felt not so much a loathing for the old woman as a revulsion for all things evil—an emotion that grew in strength with every passing minute.”
As the servant watches the old woman pluck the hairs from a corpse, he is filled with a revulsion for all evil. This contradicts the symbolism of the pimple: It suggests that the servant’s morality may actually be stronger than his corruption. It also shows the servant’s mindset, as he immediately views the old woman as “evil” and leaps into action to stop her, rather than reaching out to her or offering assistance.
“Naturally he no longer recalled that, only moments before, he himself had been planning to become a thief.”
This line reflects Akutagawa’s modernist tendencies as it delves into the human psyche. The way the servant quickly forgets about his own moral dilemma is a reflection of the fluidity of the human mind, the ease with which people can change their perceptions of the world and themselves. It is also a form of irony: The servant is shocked and appalled by the old woman’s actions, even though he had just been considering becoming a thief himself.
“The servant grasped the old woman’s arm—sheer skin and bone like the foot of a chicken—and finally twisted her to the floor.”
The description of the old woman reflects Japanese Socioeconomics within the context of the story. Her stick-thin arm is a clear sign of poverty, which marks her as someone who has been struggling to survive for some time. The animalistic descriptions also call to mind the animals that have made their homes around the Rashōmon gate: particularly the crows. Like them, the old woman has become a scavenger, living off the dead.
“I know, I know, it may be wrong to pull out dead people’s hair. But these people here deserve what they get. Take this woman, the one I was pulling the hair from: she used to cut snakes into four-inch pieces and dry them and sell them as dried fish at the palace guardhouse.”
As she explains her actions to the servant, the old woman shifts blame onto the dead woman whose hair she was pulling out. This is a representation of how Morality and Moral Corruption can be twisted when searching for a Means of Survival. The old woman tries to convince the servant that her actions are acceptable because the person from whom she is stealing also did immoral things. It is also implied that the dead woman’s actions were even less acceptable than the old woman’s: Snakes have a tricky place in Japanese mythology, but it has historically been taboo to harm or disturb them. Selling snakes as fish adds a deeper level of immorality to the dead woman’s actions.
“I don’t think she was wrong to do it. She did it to keep from starving to death. She couldn’t help it.”
Here, the old woman challenges the servant’s rigid ideals. Though she excuses her own actions by pointing to the dead woman’s, she also claims that neither of them is truly immoral because they are acting (or acted) solely to survive. This shows that the old woman has a sense of morality lingering within her, as she does not want to be viewed as evil or corrupt; it also shows that she knows she cannot justify her own actions without justifying the dead woman’s, too.
“[The servant’s] right hand played with the festering pimple on his cheek. As he listened, a new kind of courage began to germinate in his heart—a courage he had lacked earlier beneath the gate: one that was moving in a direction opposite to the courage that had impelled him to seize the old woman.”
This is the turning point for the servant. Once again, he is touching the pimple, the symbol of the moral corruption that festers inside of him. He cannot resist it, and with the old woman’s justifications of immorality, he no longer has to. The word “courage” is also a callback—earlier, he thought he was not brave enough to cast aside his morals just to survive. Now, however, he is freed from the confines of acting morally, as the old woman has enabled him to justify theft. The narrator points out that this “courage” is a stark contrast to his earlier behavior, which drove him to stop the old woman’s “evil” actions.
“He was no longer torn between starving to death or becoming a thief. In his current state of mind, the very thought of starving to death was so nearly banished from his consciousness that it became all but unthinkable for him.”
When the servant first spotted the old woman stealing from the dead, he completely forgot that he had been considering abandoning his morals and becoming a thief. Now, with justification in hand, he does the opposite: He completely forgets that he had ever considered starving to death. This is the ultimate representation of the battle between Morality and Moral Corruption, and the servant’s wildly flip-flopping morality is representative of Akutagawa’s modernist tendencies.
“She saw only the cavernous blackness of the night. What happened to the lowly servant, no one knows.”
The woman observes only darkness where the servant disappeared down the stone steps of the tower. Once again, Akutagawa uses the setting to symbolize the grim, dark state of Kyoto and its people. The ambiguous ending allows the reader to reflect on the characters and apply personal perspective to their actions and fates.
By Ryūnosuke Akutagawa