Rashōmon by Akutagawa: Short Story Summary, the Ending, and How It Differs from Kurosawa's Film

The old woman's argument

Her answer is simple. She is pulling out the hair to make wigs, because she needs to survive. The dead woman, she adds, was no saint either: while she was alive she cheated people by selling snake meat and claiming it was fish. The old woman says that this was not wrong, because it let the dead woman survive, and so the dead woman would surely forgive her in turn; if she did not take the hair, she too would starve.

This is the hinge of the story. The servant is disappointed by how ordinary her explanation is, and yet, as he listens, the courage he lacked at the foot of the gate begins to grow in him. He answers her with her own logic: "You won't blame me, then, for taking your clothes. That's what I have to do to keep from starving to death." He tears off her robe, kicks her to the floor, runs down the stairs with the clothing under his arm, and vanishes into the darkness.

The ending: "No one knows where the servant went"

The last line of "Rashōmon" is famous in Japan, and Akutagawa changed it more than once. In the 1915 magazine version, the story ended by saying that the servant was already hurrying through the rain into the city of Kyoto to commit robbery. The first book edition kept that idea with slightly different wording, but when the story was collected again in Hana in 1918, about two and a half years after its first appearance, Akutagawa replaced it with the line now known to every Japanese student: no one knows where the servant went.

The change matters. The first ending tells you exactly what the servant became. The final version stops at the edge of the dark and leaves the reader to finish the thought. That open door is a large part of why teachers like to ask students what happened next, and why the story still invites argument a century later.

Where the story comes from: the Konjaku Monogatarishū

Akutagawa did not invent the scene from nothing. "Rashōmon" is based on tales from the Konjaku Monogatarishū, a large collection of stories compiled in the late Heian period. The main source is a tale in volume 29 about a thief who climbs to the upper floor of the gate and sees the dead, and Akutagawa also borrowed part of a tale in volume 31 about an old woman who sold fish. In the old tale, the thief is simply a thief. Akutagawa's addition is the servant's hesitation and the moment of choice, which turns a short anecdote into a study of how a person talks himself into wrongdoing.

The gate in the title was the main gate of the Heian capital, properly written Rajōmon. Until modern times it was often written "Rashōmon" instead, and the Noh play by Kanze Nobumitsu that came before Akutagawa's story also used that title. The plot of the Noh play has nothing to do with the story; only the name of the gate comes from it.

Who was Ryūnosuke Akutagawa?

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927) was a writer of the Taishō period who is often called the "father of the Japanese short story". Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He began writing after entering Tokyo Imperial University in 1913, where he studied English literature, and he published "Rashōmon" in the magazine Teikoku Bungaku while he was still a student.

The story did not make him famous at first. His friends criticized it heavily. Even so, Akutagawa found the courage to visit his idol, the novelist Natsume Sōseki, at his weekly literary gatherings in December 1915. His next story, "The Nose" (1916), received a letter of praise from Sōseki and gave Akutagawa his first taste of fame. In 1917 his first short-story collection appeared under the title Rashōmon, together with "The Nose" and "Yam Gruel".

Many of his early stories, including "Rashōmon", reinterpret old tales, especially those of the Konjaku Monogatarishū. He died in 1927 at the age of 35, and eight years later his friend Kan Kikuchi created the literary prize that carries his name.

Rashōmon the story vs. Rashomon the film

Many readers in English first meet the word through Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon. The film, however, is based mainly on a different Akutagawa story, "In a Grove". Only the title and some material for the frame scenes, such as the theft of a kimono and the discussion of whether stealing to survive is wrong, come from "Rashōmon". Kurosawa's film became the first Japanese film to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and it borrowed from both stories.

So if you have seen the film, the short story will feel both familiar and new. The rain, the gate and the stolen robe are there, but the courtroom of conflicting testimonies is not. The story is shorter, darker and focused on a single person's decision.

What is Rashōmon really about?

Japanese critics usually describe the story as a portrait of human egoism: the willingness to do wrong in order to live. Akutagawa's historical stories often explore exactly this inner selfishness. What makes "Rashōmon" sharp is the chain of excuses. The dead woman cheated customers to survive. The old woman robs the dead woman to survive. The servant robs the old woman to survive. Each person uses the same reasoning, and each step down the chain feels a little easier.

The story also shows how fast a moral position can flip. At one moment the servant is burning with righteous anger; a few minutes later he is a robber. Nothing in his situation has changed except the argument he has heard. That is the uncomfortable question the story leaves with every reader: how firm are your principles when you are cold, hungry and out of options?

Why Rashōmon is still read today

"Rashōmon" is assigned in Japanese high school coursework, so almost every reader in Japan meets it as a teenager. It also lives on in popular culture. It plays a part in Jim Jarmusch's 1999 film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, it inspired a 1972 instrumental rock tune by the guitarist Takeshi Terauchi, and the manga Bungo Stray Dogs gives a character named after Akutagawa an ability full of references to the story.

For learners, the story is a good first step into Japanese literature because it is short and the text is in the public domain. A bilingual book, Breaking into Japanese Literature (2003), prints "Rashōmon" and "In a Grove" in Japanese with English support side by side.

Learn English with Rashōmon

Expression	Meaning	Example
at a loss	not knowing what to do	Under the gate, the servant was at a loss.
make ends meet	earn just enough to live	The old woman made wigs to make ends meet.
the lesser of two evils	the less bad of two bad choices	Was stealing really the lesser of two evils?
turn the tables	reverse a situation against someone	The servant turned the tables on the old woman.
vanish into thin air	disappear completely	He ran down the stairs and vanished into thin air.

Practice: Write three sentences about the servant's choice using "at a loss" and "the lesser of two evils". Then add one sentence saying what you think happened to him after the story ends.