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Although the Rashomon Gate does not exist anymore, thanks to the story by Akutagawa Ryunosuke and the film by Kurosawa Akira, it has always been a huge looming presence in my mind…

This monumental gate was erected at the southern entrance to Kyoto, then called Heiankyo, when the capital city was founded in 794. From the gate a wide avenue, Suzaku, led straight north to the palace zone, which formed a square block at the northern end of the city. Suzaku split the city into exactly two halves, the East and West City. The original name of the gate at its southern extremity was Rajomon (can also be pronounced as “Raseimon”), written with a different second character, and signifying the main gate to a castle grounds. Despite that, Kyoto at that time probably was not completely enclosed by a wall, as conditions in Japan were peaceful.

Today in the museum of nearby Toji Temple you will find a statue of a stern Tobatsu Bishamon, originally Chinese, looking like a soldier standing guard. Tobatsu Bishamon originated in Central Asia and figured as the protector of cities. And indeed, it is said this statue was originally placed on the top floor of Rashomon, glaring at the lands beyond the city, to protect Heiankyo from evil…

The Rashomon Gate was 32 meters wide and 8 high. It had red pillars and green roofs, a bit like the present Heian Shrine – you can see a model in the Kyoto Museum of Culture. The real gate has long since disappeared- its presence is rather forlornly indicated by a small monument in a dusty playground. The great gate had already fallen into disrepair by the 12th century. It had become a weird place, a hideout for thieves. People whispered a demon was living here and sometimes corpses of the poor would be abandoned at the gate.

The ruined gate is the setting for Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s short story “Rashomon” and also provides the narrative frame for Kurosawa’s 1950 film of the same title. Akutagawa’s use of the gate was deliberately symbolic, with the gate’s ruined state representing the moral and physical decay of Japanese civilization and culture in the later Heian period. The story is quite gruesome, as the manservant who has lost his job gradually decides to become a thief, after seeing an old hag on the attic of the Rashomon gate tearing out the hair of dead bodies to make wigs… The old hag becomes his first victim, as in good old Dostoyevsky-style…

This story and sixteen others have been freshly translated by Jay Rubin, who is also known for his Murakami Haruki translations (in fact, Murakami Haruki has contributed a sympathetic preface). Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories of course also contains In a Bamboo Grove, which together with Rashomon formed the basis for the classic film Rashomon by Kurosawa Akira. In fact, in my mind the stories are so indelibly linked to the film, that when reading them, I see the images before my eyes of Mifune Toshiro as the bandit, Kyo Machiko as the lady and Shimura Takashi as the woodcutter…

In a Bamboo Grove perfectly demonstrates how humans all interpret events in different ways, but always to their own advantage. Pride and vanity keep us from seeing the truth (if the truth exists at all…). A samurai and his wfe travel through a dense forest, they meet a robber, the samurai eventually dies, a passing-by woodcutter reports the crime. The woodcutter, a priest, the robber, the gentleman and his lady all have their own, self-serving versions of the same murder (or was it suicide?) – even the dead man speaking via a medium is still telling lies from over the grave…

Akutagawa’s stories are of course just as much classics as Kurosawa’s film. Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927) only wrote about one hundred stories and novellas in his short life, but many of them are a hard and fast part of the canon of modern Japanese literature.

Akutagawa used to be only available in somewhat antiquated translations, so this new translation is very welcome. It also contains other famous historical tales as The Nose, Dragon, The Spider Thread and Hell Screen. These are all absolute favorites: in The Nose a priest with an ugly long nose after much trouble gets rid of his nemesis but then longs to have it back as he is nothing special anymore; in Dragon a group of people all believe they saw a dragon rise up from a pond, although nothing like that really happened, a perfect story of religious obsession; in Hell Screen a painter who can only paint from life, sacrifices his own daughter to create his masterwork in which sinners are tortured in fiery hell; and in The Spider’s Thread selfishness prevents the protaganist to be saved by the Buddha.  Although meant for children, this is truly a perfectly written story…

Besides historical fiction, also several modern stories have been included. The Story of a Head that Fell Off is the perfect anti-war tale; and Horse Legs is a Kafkian fantasy even Abe Kobo could not have bettered.

The final section is dedicated to autobiographical stories – Akutagawa’s family problems, and his increasing fear of going mad (like his mother before him), which eventually led to his suicide. Spinning Gears is the strongest here – the reader almost feels he is pulled down the same dark hole as Akutagawa himself.

At about the same time that Rubin’s translation appeared, also Mandarins: Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Archipelago Books, 2007), translated by Charles de Wolf, was published. This is also an excellent volume and happily among the 15 stories selected, there is only an overlap of 2 stories with Rubin. Most of these tales are set in modern times, as the title story Mandarins.

Both books are highly recommended… it only is a pity they do not cover all of Akutagawa’s excellent stories. I hope more translations will follow, to replace the antiquated translations still doing the rounds, and add new discoveries, as these two books so aptly did…

Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories, translated by Jay Rubin and with an introduction by Murakami Haruki (Penguin Classics, 2006)

Mandarins: Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Archipelago Books, 2007), translated by Charles de Wolf