Rashōmon

"Rashōmon" (羅生門) is a short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa based on tales from the Konjaku Monogatarishū.


The story was first published in 1915 in Teikoku Bungaku. Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon (1950) is in fact based primarily on another of Akutagawa's short stories, "In a Grove"; only the film's title and some of the material for the frame scenes, such as the theft of a kimono and the discussion of the moral ambiguity of thieving to survive, are borrowed from "Rashōmon".