Rashomon is a 1915 short story by Japanese author Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the plot of which is taken from a collection of classical Japanese stories called The Tale of Today and Tomorrow.

The work tells the story of a house slave waiting for the rain to stop under the Rashomon Gate at the end of the Fujimura period. When he was at a loss for words, as if he was in a state of uncertainty, he came across an old crone who plucked hairs from the dead for a living, and the desperate house slave, who was so evil that he decided to abandon his misery and escape from the Rashomon Gate by stripping off the old crone's clothes, escaped from the gate of the Rashomon Gate.

The plot is simple, the characters sparse, short, small scenes. The time, place, characters, and ending are all revealed to the reader. Although the work is a historical novel with old themes, it is given a certain moral meaning, depicting the people at the lowest level of society who are struggling tenaciously to continue to survive, rather than being a historical novel in the pure sense of the word.

Expanded:

Theme:

In Rashomon, Ryunosuke Akutagawa depicts the whole process of an ordinary man's fall driven by egoism. Moreover, by depicting the character impressions of "the lesser evil", "the evil", and "the most evil", he slowly brings a shock to the reader's psyche.

Based on the influence of egoism, either violating morality or harming the interests of others, either one is a stepping stone for the egoist to achieve his or her desire. However, the egoist will blame external circumstances and others for the fault while doing bad things himself for the sake of his own self-esteem.

This article then describes the change from good to evil and shows the fragility of people's values in the face of egoism. Thus, if one is eroded by egoism, then of course one will see the interests of others as merely stepping stones to satisfy the egoist materially and spiritually. Broadly speaking, it can be said that most of the evils of mankind can be said to be egoism based on whatever justification.

Ryunosuke gives the reader vivid egoists in the form of short stories. After reading it, the reader is also compelled to feel the awfulness of egoism and perhaps reflect on his own behavior, which is one of the reasons why "Rashomon" has become his masterpiece and is being noticed by the world.