Rashomon

芥川龍之介

Heian-era Kyoto lies broken by earthquake, whirlwind, famine and fire. A servant, dismissed by his master, shelters beneath the ruined Rashomon gate, watching rain that will not stop, with nowhere left to go. Become a thief, or starve. Unable to choose, he climbs into the gate tower - and finds an old woman plucking the hair, strand by strand, from the corpses piled there. "I do it to live," she says. Her reasoning does not disgust him. It hands him the blade he was looking for. A single moment in which good and evil collapse before hunger: Akutagawa Ryunosuke's defining work.