Rashomon and Other Stories is a collection of classic tales by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. First published in 1919, he took inspiration from traditional and historical folk tales like The Tales of the Genji and Heike. Written with a spare style, he reveals unique perspectives of human behaviour.
Rashomon is a short tale of a man who contemplates becoming a thief, while In A Grove was the story adapted by Akira Kurosawa for his classic film Rashomon; presenting the conflicting witness statements around a man who was murdered in a bamboo grove, it includes a tale from the victim himself. Other stories in this collection are Yam Gruel (a lowly man who yearns for the one night a year he can eat yam gruel, is presented with all he can eat), The Martyr (a young monk is wrongly accused of fathering a child), and The Dragon, in which a put-upon man plans a joke for revenge, that possibly will come true. As each story is between 10 and 20 pages, it is a quick read (all six stories fit within 110 pages), giving you time to go back and enjoy them again.
The best story in my opinion is Kesa and Morito. So strong is their relationship, as they individually proclaim their love and disgust with each other, they plan for different reasons to kill her husband. Akutagawa strips the couples actions down to powerful emotion. To think this was inspired by an original text dating to the 1400's is amazing, what he has created is timeless. While more famous, Rashomon and In A Grove are slighter stories compared to the others.
This collection is in the public domain and a free digital download in many formats can be found online.
1919 / Tradeback / 110 pages
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