Rashomon: A desperate servant's house will hide from the rain in the gate building, and when he is struggling to become a robber, he will see an old woman pulling out the hair of the corpse. The corpse dried snake meat and sold it as fish. The old woman pulled out the hair of the corpse to make a wig for a living. The interlocking sins will eventually make the family a villain who stripped the old woman's clothes. There is only a Rashomon gate between the world and the idea of hell.
In the Bamboo Forest: Zhensha, a beautiful and strong-willed woman, and her samurai husband, Wu Hong, were coveted by the Jianghu thief Duo Xiangwan for their excellent appearance when they went out. Duoxiang Maru tricked Wu Hong into a bamboo forest and tied it to bamboo in the name of digging for treasures. Later, in the bamboo forest, he raped Zhensha in front of Wu Hong. Zhensha decided to kill her husband and Duoxiang Pill because she couldn't bear to be humiliated, but the woman was physically weak, so she tricked Duoxiang Pill into eloping with her and begged her to kill her husband Wu Hong. Duoxiang Maru then had a duel with Wu Hong, which led to Wu Hong's death. Zhensha fled to Kiyomizu Temple, while Duoxiang Maru returned to the mountain road to Beijing. The full text takes the dictation of the person concerned as the core, describes the incident from different angles and tells the feelings of the characters in different positions.
"Hell Change": The respected adult Horikawa has a superb painter, Liang Xiu, and an old man with a scarlet mouth, short stature, bony and perverse personality. However, such an unreasonable old man will only show the warmth that ordinary people should have when facing his clever, beautiful and sensible daughter. Liang Xiu's daughter saved the monkey named "Liang Xiu" when she was a little maid in the official residence of Horikawa. The adults in Horikawa don't let go of Liangxiu's daughter, but Liangxiu doesn't want her daughter to be in the residence of the people's congress in Horikawa. For this reason, my Lord asked Liang Xiu to talk about the screen of "Hell Change". Liang Xiu is getting weirder and weirder for this painting, constantly looking for inspiration. Until finally, I asked Mr. Horikawa to see a betel nut wool car with a noble lady sitting in it. In the Snowmelt Mountain Villa, the adults told Liangxiu that Liangxiu's daughter was sitting in the car before burning the betel nut wool car. Liangxiu chose to burn the betel nut wool car after some struggle, and the "Liangxiu" monkey also ran into the fire to accompany Liangxiu's daughter. After the screen of "Hell Change" was completed, the painter Liang Xiu hanged himself in his room.
"Nose": The monk Zen Zhi's inner confession has an ugly nose that is five or six inches long. Although the inner confession pretends to be indifferent, it still rankles. A disciple who once worked for an internal supplier learned a way to narrow his nose. After the Zen wisdom inner supplier narrowed his nose in this way, people around him began to laugh at him behind his back, which made the inner supplier very uneasy and regretful. Finally, the nose grew back to its original appearance.
Yam porridge: An unattractive, cowardly and sympathetic five-product has a dream-to be able to drink enough yam porridge. At a banquet, Fujiwara Liren, the son of the samurai's minister of civil affairs, learned of his idea and took him to Dunga to drink yam porridge. After arriving in Dunhe, Wupin drank half a pot of yam porridge at the kind invitation of a group of people.
River boy: a patient in a mental hospital-he mistakenly entered the river boy country when he was chasing the river boy on the 23rd. There he heard and witnessed everything in this country, felt unbearable and fled back to human society. But he immediately felt disgusted and desperate for human society, and then he wanted to escape back to Hetong country, but he was arrested and sent to a mental hospital as a "madman".
Throughout the book, Ryunosuke Akutagawa wrote about human nature in society. Little people who constantly lose their bottom line in order to survive, women who have been raped and widowed, painters who commit suicide because of their enthusiasm for art and love for their daughters, monks who break the precepts because of their ugly noses, five products that are easily realized by people with dreams, and crazy people who can't return because of their dreams have all become blind submissives in this society woven by winners-cowards or lazy eggs.
The last chapter, The Dwarf's Words, shows me that Ryunosuke Akutagawa sees this society too clearly. In fact, history and life are endless cycles, and human desire for all kinds of things eventually blinds our eyes. The more we desire, the less we can see the road ahead. Putting aside the cloak of morality, society is just a society ruled by historical victors, and ideology and culture are just the means for victors to maintain political power. Looking beyond the usual dimensions to see humanity, morality, women and love seems to have a clear answer.