Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

  After she lost her parents, O-Gin was adopted by Jo-an– Magoshichi. His wife, Joanna–O-Sumi, was as tender-hearted as her husband. O-Gin spent day after happy day with them, tending the cattle and mowing the wheat. Nor did the three of them fail, as they went about their chores, to observe fasting and prayer as often as they could without attracting the attention of the other villagers. Many times O-Gin would stand in the shade of the fig tree by the well, looking up at the large crescent moon and praying with her whole heart. So young that her hair still hung loose to her shoulders, this sweet girl would offer up prayers of great simplicity:

  “All hail to you, O compassionate Mother. This wanderer, this child of Ewa, cries out to you alone. Please turn your gentle gaze upon this vale of tears. Ammei.”

  But then one Natala (Christmas) eve, Satan burst into Magoshichi’s house along with several officials. In the great sunken hearth of Magoshichi’s house blazed the Yule log, and on this special night alone, the holy crucifix was ceremonially displayed upon the soot-smeared wall. And finally, in the stable out back, the officials found the manger full of water for the infant Zesus’ first bath. They nodded to each other and bound Magoshichi and his wife with ropes. O-Gin, too, they tied up. None of the captives, however, showed anything but the most complete composure. They were prepared to endure any torment for the salvation of their anima. They shared the same deep, unspoken faith: Our Lord will surely favor us with His divine protection. Is not the very fact that we were arrested on Natala eve proof of the depth of His love for us?

  The officials led their bound prisoners to the residence of the local magistrate. But along the way, even as the night wind struck them, the three continued to intone their nativity prayers. “O Young Lord of Ours, born in the Land of Belem, where art thou now? Honored and praised be thy Name!”

  As he watched them being captured, Satan laughed and clapped his hands with joy. But he was obviously more than a little angered by their courageous demeanor. Later, alone again, he spat in disgust and, transforming himself into a great millstone, he rolled into the darkness and disappeared.

  Jo-an–Magoshichi, Joanna–O-Sumi, and Mariya–O-Gin were not only thrown into an underground dungeon: they were subjected to many tortures to make them abandon the teachings of the Heavenly Lord. Despite torture by water and torture by fire, however, their resolve remained firm. Even as their torn flesh began to fester, they knew the gates of Haraiso would open to them with but another moment’s endurance. Indeed, at the thought of the Heavenly Lord’s great benevolence, even this dark underground dungeon had all the sublimity of Haraiso. And often at times when they drifted between dream and waking, august angels and saints would come to comfort them. O-Gin in particular was favored with such moments of bliss. Once, she saw San Jo-an Batista scooping up many locusts upon his broad palms and saying to her, “Eat!” Another time she saw the great angel Gabriel, his white wings folded, giving her water in a golden cup.

  The local magistrate, meanwhile, ignorant of the teachings of the Heavenly Lord (and of the teachings of Shakyamuni, for that matter), had no idea why his prisoners were being so obstinate. He sometimes wondered if all three of them were crazy. When he finally realized that they were by no means crazy, he began to feel they might be serpents or unicorns—or at least some kind of animal unrelated to humanity. To allow such animals to go on living would not only be a violation of present-day law, it could compromise the security of the country. And so, after he held them for a month in the earthen prison, the magistrate decided that he would burn all three of them. (In fact, like most people, this magistrate hardly ever thought about the security of the country. He had both the law and popular custom to rely on. That was quite enough for him without the extra effort of thinking about such things.)

  The believers showed no sign of fear as they were led to the execution ground on the village outskirts, an empty, rock-strewn patch of earth next to the cemetery. Upon arrival, they were read the indictments against them and tied to stout square posts. The posts were then set in the center of the execution ground, with Joanna–O-Sumi on the right, Jo-an–Magoshichi in the middle, and Mariya–O-Gin on the left. O-Sumi looked suddenly much older now after days of torture. Magoshichi’s bewhiskered cheeks seemed drained of blood. And O-Gin… O-Gin, by comparison, looked more like her usual self. Standing on top of piles of firewood, all three wore the same calm expression.

  A large crowd had been gathering all day along the edges of the execution ground. Against the sky above the spectators, a half-dozen pines stretched out their branches like a sacred canopy above a Buddhist altar.

  When all preparations were complete, one of the officials stepped out grandly before the three convicts and announced that he would offer them a reprieve: they could take a few more minutes to think about giving up their faith in the teachings of the Heavenly Lord. All they need do was say they renounced the holy teachings, and he would immediately loosen their bonds. None of the three responded to him. All kept their gazes fixed on the distant heavens, and all had smiles on their lips.

  The next few minutes were a time of utter silence—for the officials, of course, but for the crowd as well. Countless eyes were locked, unblinking, on the faces of the convicts. This is not to say that all the spectators were holding their breath out of pity for the victims. Rather, most were waiting in suspense for the moment when the fires would be lit. And the execution was taking so long that the officials, for their part, were too bored to talk to each other.

  Then suddenly the ears of the assembled throng caught a wholly unexpected declaration:

  “I have decided to abandon the holy teachings.”

  The voice was that of O-Gin. A stir went through the crowd, but no sooner had the muttering begun than the spectators fell silent again, for Magoshichi had turned sadly toward O-Gin with a feeble cry:

  “O-Gin! Have you been blinded by Satan? Just hold on a little longer, and you will be able to see Our Lord’s holy face!”

  Even before his words had ended, O-Sumi strained to make herself heard from her distant perch: “O-Gin! O-Gin! Satan is taking possession of you! Pray hard, now! Pray hard!”

  But O-Gin answered neither Magoshichi nor O-Sumi. Her eyes stayed trained on the canopy of the graveyard pines above the heads of the spectators. Before long, an official gave the order for O-Gin to be untied.

  As soon as he saw this, Jo-an–Magoshichi closed his eyes in apparent resignation. “O Lord, to whom all things are possible, I humbly submit to Your Divine Plan.”

  Once her ropes were off, O-Gin merely stood where she was, a blank expression on her face. But then, catching sight of Magoshichi and O-Sumi, she went down on her knees in front of them and wept. Magoshichi’s eyes were still closed, and O-Sumi averted her face.

  “Father! Mother! Please forgive me!” O-Gin cried at last. “I have abandoned the holy teachings, and it is because I noticed the canopy of pines over there. Asleep under those pines in the graveyard, my parents do not know the teachings of Our Heavenly Lord, and by now they must have fallen down into Inherno. It would be unforgivable of me to enter the gates of Haraiso without them. And so I will follow them down to the bottom of Hell. Please go now, Mother and Father, to be with Lord Zesus and the holy Maria. And I—now that I have abandoned the holy teachings—I cannot go on living…”

  O-Gin said this in broken snatches, and then she gave way to weeping. Now Joanna–O-Sumi, too, rained down tears on the firewood beneath her feet. To indulge in useless lamentation was by no means proper behavior for a believer about to enter Haraiso. Jo-an–Magoshichi turned a look of loathing on his wife next to him, and screamed at her, “Have you been possessed by Satan, too? Go ahead if you want to: abandon the teachings of Our Heavenly Lord. I’ll burn to death alone. Just watch!”

  “No no,” said O-Sumi. “I will go with you. But not… but not…”

  Swallowing her tears, O-Sumi, half-shouting, flung out her words: “Not because I want to go to Haraiso, but because I want to
be with you.”

  Magoshichi remained silent for a long time, but his face changed from ghastly pale to blood red and back, and broke out in beads of sweat. Now, in his mind’s eye, Magoshichi was watching his anima. He watched as an angel and Satan struggled to gain possession of it. If O-Gin, collapsed in tears at his feet, had not at that moment raised her face to him—but it was too late now, for that is exactly what she did. She fixed her overflowing eyes on his with a strange gleam. The light that flashed in those eyes revealed not merely the heart of an innocent girl. It was the heart of all human beings, all the “wandering children of Ewa.”

  “Father! Let’s go to Inherno together! And Mother, and I, and my father and mother who are already there—let’s let Satan take us all together!”

  And in the end Magoshichi, too, fell from grace.

  Among the many stories of Christian martyrdom in this country of ours, this one has been handed down to posterity as the single most embarrassing failure. When all three of them abandoned the holy teachings together, the entire crowd of spectators—men and women of all ages, not one of whom had any grasp of what the Heavenly Lord even was—conceived a tremendous hatred for them. It may well be that the crowd felt cheated out of the promised burning at the stake.

  Another tradition has it that Satan, overjoyed at the way things turned out, changed himself into a huge book and flew around the execution ground all night. The author of the present tale is highly skeptical: was it so great a victory for Satan as to prompt such excessive celebrating?

  (August 1922)

  LOYALTY

  1. Maejima Rin’emon

  No sooner had he begun to recover from his fatigue after a period of illness than young Itakura Shuri suffered a terrible attack of nervous exhaustion.

  His shoulders felt painfully stiff. His head ached. He could not even apply himself to his reading, normally one of his favorite activities. The mere sound of footsteps in the corridor or of voices in the house was enough to break his concentration. As the symptoms grew more severe, the tiniest stimuli kept preying on his nerves.

  If, for example, a black-lacquer tobacco tray bore a decoration of creeping vines in gold, the delicate stalks and leaves would upset him. The sight of sharp, pointed objects such as ivory chopsticks or bronze fire tongs would make him anxious. His condition finally deteriorated to the point where the intersecting borders of tatami mats or the four corners of a ceiling would fill him with the same nervous tension he might experience in staring at a sharp blade.

  Shuri could do nothing but cower in his room all day, scowling. Anything and everything he did was painful. He often wished that he could end his awareness of his own existence, but his splintered nerves did not permit that. He felt like an ant in a pit, struggling to crawl out of the sand flowing hellishly in on him. Meanwhile, he was surrounded by the family’s “hereditary retainers,” men with no comprehension of what was going on inside him, who wasted their time and energy dreading the worst.

  None of them can understand my suffering. Such thoughts seemed to intensify Shuri’s nervous condition. Every little thing sent him into a frenzy. His shouts could frequently be heard in the next estate. Often he would reach for a sword on the rack. To everyone who witnessed these outbursts, he seemed almost to have become a different person. Spasms would run through his sunken yellow cheeks, and his eyes would take on a strange, murderous glint. During his worst attacks, his trembling hands would tear at the hair of his temples. His attendants saw that he was having one of his fits, and would warn each other to keep away from him.

  Shuri feared that he was losing his mind, as of course did those around him. Just as naturally, he resented their fear, but he could not quell his own. When a fit subsided and a greater melancholy weighed down upon him, he would sometimes feel the fear shoot through him like a bolt of lightning, along with an ominous suspicion that the fear was itself a sign of impending madness. What if I go crazy? Everything turned dark at the thought.

  Eventually the irritation caused by the endless stream of stimuli from the outside world would expunge the fear of madness. The irritation could also, conversely, awaken him to his fear. His mind ran in endless circles from one anxiety to the next, like a cat chasing its own tail.

  Shuri’s fits became a source of dread for his entire retinue. The one most seriously troubled by them was the House Elder, Maejima Rin’emon.

  Although officially titled “House Elder,” as if he were the hereditary chief retainer in Shuri’s branch of the Itakura family, Rin’emon had in fact been dispatched by Itakura Shikibu,1 lord of the main house, to be “attached” to Shuri’s household. He was, in effect, a spy for the main house keeping watch over the branch house. Thus even Shuri, the master here, always treated him with deference. Rin’emon was a big, ruddy man who had almost no experience of illness, and among the household’s many samurai, there were few with superior accomplishments in both the civil and martial arts. Thus, Rin’emon acted as Shuri’s advisor in all matters. His custom of freely offering “loyal remonstrance” to his master won him the nickname “the Itakura Family’s Ōkubo Hikoza.”2

  Once it became obvious to him that Shuri’s fits were growing worse, Rin’emon began to agonize over the fate of the household, to the point of being unable to sleep at night. Shuri would soon be visiting Edo Castle, where he would formally announce to the Shōgun that he had recovered from his illness. If he suffered a fit while in the Castle, there was no telling how he might offend one of the Great Lords in attendance or one of the other bannermen with whom he would be seated. If an insult led to bloodshed in the Castle, Shuri’s entire 7,000-koku estate could well be confiscated. Nor were cautionary precedents difficult to find: was there not the Hotta–Inaba clash3 to consider?

  Such thoughts kept Rin’emon in a continual state of agitation. As far as he was concerned, moreover, Shuri’s fits were due not to an illness of the body but to an illness of the spirit. And so, just as he used to remonstrate with Shuri against willfulness and extravagance, now he boldly sought to remonstrate with him about his nervous exhaustion.

  Rin’emon would offer Shuri his unpalatable counsel whenever the occasion arose, but there was no sign this did anything to moderate the fits. Quite the opposite: the more Rin’emon found fault and fretted over Shuri’s behavior, the worse the condition became. One time the young lord came dangerously close to slashing Rin’emon with his sword. “How dare you speak to me that way?” he shouted. “You forget that I am your lord! I’d cut you down if I didn’t have the Main House to think about.” What Rin’emon saw in Shuri’s eyes was no longer simple anger. It had become an unquenchable hatred.

  As Rin’emon continued to demonstrate his loyalty by feeding Shuri one bitter pill after another, the convoluted feelings between master and retainer grew increasingly turbulent. No longer was it merely a matter of Shuri’s coming to hate Rin’emon: a feeling of hatred had begun to germinate in Rin’emon’s heart as well. Rin’emon was not aware of this, of course. He believed that his loyalty toward Shuri would remain forever unchanged—except in one eventuality.

  “If the master does not behave like a master, the retainer need not behave like a retainer”: this was not only the Way taught by the philosopher Mencius4 but the natural Way of humanity that lay behind Mencius. Not that Rin’emon agreed with such a view; he was determined to give his all as a loyal retainer. But bitter experience had shown him that his unpalatable counsel had no effect. He therefore resigned himself to resorting to the final measure that he had, until now, kept locked in his breast: he would have to force Shuri into retirement and arrange for the adoption of an heir from another branch of the Itakura lineage.

  The House came before anything else, Rin’emon believed. The incumbent must be sacrificed before the House was sacrificed. This was especially true for the eminent House of Itakura, which had maintained an unblemished reputation ever since the time of its founding progenitor, Itakura Shirōzaemon Katsushige. His son Matazaemon Shigemune won fame a
s the Shōgun’s Military Governor5 in Kyoto, a post he inherited from his father. Matazaemon’s younger brother, Mondo Shigemasa, was honored by the great Tokugawa founder, Ieyasu, himself, who assigned him the crucial role of supervising the signing of the peace treaty after the Winter Siege of Osaka Castle in the nineteenth year of Keichō.6 This was the beginning of an illustrious career for Mondo: as commander of the Western Army when the Tokugawa forces suppressed the Shimabara Rebellion in the fourteenth year of Kan’ei, he was honored to fly the Shōgun’s family banner at the siege of Amakusa.7 Rin’emon knew that he could never face the Itakura ancestors in the other world if he allowed a stain upon the honor of such a distinguished lineage.

  With such thoughts in mind, Rin’emon conducted a private search for other likely members of the Itakura family, and he was happy to find that Itakura Sado-no-kami Katsukiyo, who was serving the Shōgun as a Junior Councilor8 at the time, still had three sons living at home. If Rin’emon were to apply to the Shōgun for permission to adopt one of those sons as the heir to the house in place of Shuri, the plan would almost surely be approved. Such negotiations would, of course, have to be kept absolutely secret from both Shuri and his consort. Only when his desperate ruminations had reached this point did Rin’emon feel he had emerged into the light. The feeling was clouded, though, by an undeniable tinge of sorrow such as he had never known before. “This is all for the sake of the House,” he told himself, but behind his resolve he sensed, indistinctly, a certain effort at self-vindication, and the awareness hovered there like a barely perceptible halo around the moon.

  What Shuri, with his delicate health, hated most about Rin’emon was his robust constitution. Next he hated the quiet power that Rin’emon possessed over him as an “attached” House Elder. And finally he hated the way Rin’emon’s loyalty was centered entirely upon the House. “You forget that I am your lord!” he had shouted at Rin’emon, his words smoldering with the dark flames of his complex hatred.