It was evening. A solitary lackey sat under Rashōmon waiting for the
rain to clear.
Beneath the broad gate, there was not another soul. Only, on a big
round pillar, from which the vermilion lacquer had peeled off here
and there, sat one lone cricket. Since Rashōmon was in the great
thoroughfare Sujaku Ōji, it would seem that there should also have been
two or three tradeswomen in wide straw hats and men in citizen’s caps
sheltering there from the rain. All the same, besides this single man,
there was no one.
This was because for the past two or three years in Kyōto one calamity
after another--earthquakes, cyclones, fires and famines--had followed
each other in rapid succession. Wherefore, throughout the capital the
desolation was extraordinary. According to the old records, things
had come to such a pass that Buddhist images and temple furniture
were broken up and, with their red lacquer and gold and silver foil
clinging to them, were heaped along the streets and sold for fire wood.
With the whole town in such a state, of course no one took the least
thought for the upkeep of Rashōmon. So turning its abandonment to their
profit, foxes and badgers found habitation there. Thieves abode there.
And finally it even became a custom with men to bring unclaimed bodies
there and leave them in the gate. Whence, when day had closed his
eye, the place was abhorred of all, and no man would set foot in the
neighborhood.
Instead, swarms of ravens from nobody knows where congregated there.
By day the innumerable rout described a circle and wheeled crying
about the ornamental grampuses high on the roof. Especially when the
sky above the gate was aflare with the sunset glow, did they stand
out distinctly like a scattering of sesamum seeds. Of course, they
were there to pick the flesh from the corpses up in the gate. However,
on this day, perhaps because of the lateness of the hour, not a bird
was to be seen. Only here and there on the crumbling stone steps,
where grass grew long in the crevices, their droppings shone in white
splashes. The lackey sat in a threadbare coat of dark blue on the
topmost of the seven steps and, fingering a great carbuncle on his
right cheek, looked vacantly at the falling rain.
I have said that he was waiting for the rain to clear. But even if it
did clear, he had nothing in particular he wished to do. Ordinarily, of
course, he must have gone back to his master’s house. But four or five
days before, he had been turned out. As I have already said, Kyōto was
in unprecedented decay. And the dismissal of this man by a master whom
he had served for years was one small ripple on this sea of troubles.
Wherefore, rather than that he was waiting for the rain to clear, it
would be more to the point to say that, driven to shelter by the storm,
this lackey who had no place to go was at a loss what to do. Besides,
the gloomy sky that day had no small effect on the sentimentalism of
this man of the Heian period. The rain, which had been falling since a
little after the hour of the monkey, still showed no sign of letting
up. So the servant sat following a rambling train of thought on the
one vital and immediate question of how he could ever manage to live
through the morrow--that is, how he could ever do the impossible--and
listened listlessly to the long rain that kept pounding down in Sujaku
Ōji.
The rain, enveloping Rashōmon, mustered a rattling roar from afar.
Darkness gradually lowered in the sky, and overhead the roof of the
gate supported a heavy leaden cloud on a point of its obliquely
projecting tiles.
For the accomplishment of the impossible, there was no time left in
which to choose a plan. If he took time, he could but choose between
starvation under some wall and starvation by some road. And then he
would simply be brought to the loft in this gate and thrown away like
a dog. If he did not choose,--again and again the man’s thoughts went
over the same winding way and arrived finally at this same place. But
no matter how often this “if” came up, it remained still in the end
but “if.” Even though he did not choose any plan, yet he had not the
courage to make the positive admission naturally necessary to the
settlement of the “if,” that there was nothing for it but to turn thief.
He sneezed a great sneeze and then got up laboriously. Night-chilled
Kyōto was cold enough to suggest the comfort of a fire. The pitiless
wind swept with the deepening darkness between the pillars of the gate.
And the cricket that had clung to the red lacquer of one of them had
disappeared.
Drawing in his neck and lifting his shoulders high in the bright
yellow shirt which he wore under his dark blue coat, the lackey looked
all about the gate. If he could find a place, out of the wind and
rain and free from the gaze of men, where he could pass one night in
peaceful sleep, there anyway, he fain would rest until the dawn. Then
fortunately his eyes fell upon a wide ladder, likewise red, mounting up
into the tower of the gate. Above, though there might be men, they were
but dead men after all. Then, taking heed lest the great plain-handled
sword swinging at his side should slip in its scabbard, he planted a
straw-sandaled foot on the bottom step of the ladder.
A few minutes elapsed. In the middle of the wide ladder leading to the
tower of Rashōmon the man crouched like a cat and, holding his breath,
took in the state of affairs above. A ray of light shining from the
tower faintly illumined his right cheek. It was the cheek on which the
festering red carbuncle gleamed in his short beard. He had lightly
calculated from the first that everybody up there was dead. But when he
had climbed up two or three steps, it appeared that not only had some
one above struck a light but that he was moving it to and fro. This was
at once made evident by the dull yellow gleam that danced in reflection
on the cobwebs hanging in the corners of the ceiling. Whoever had
struck this light in Rashōmon on this rainy night was surely no
ordinary being!
At last, stealing up with muffled steps like a gecko, the lackey,
crouching, scaled the ladder to the topmost step. Then lying as flat
as he could and craning his neck forward as far as it would go, he
peered with dread into the loft.
He peered, and the loft, as rumor had it, was full of corpses flung
carelessly away, but, the circle illuminated by the light being smaller
than had at first seemed apparent, he was not able to judge how many
there might be. Only, he could make out vaguely that there were among
them both clothed and unclothed cadavers. Of course, men and women
appeared all to be jumbled up together. And like so many dolls of
kneaded clay, these bodies sprawled on the floor with open mouths and
out-thrown arms in such confusion as to make one doubt even that they
had once been living beings. Moreover, while the wan light played on
their shoulders, breasts and more elevated parts, the shadows of their
depressions were intensified, and they lay in silence like eternal
mutes that had never known speech.
In the stench of decaying flesh, the lackey involuntarily covered his
nose. But the next moment his hand had forgotten its work. Excess of
feeling had almost completely deprived him of his olfactory sense.
For the first time he had just caught sight of a living mortal
squatting down among the dead. It was a monkey-like old hag in a dark
brown kimono, short, skinny and white-headed. With a blazing splinter
of pine in her right hand, she was peering fixedly into the face of one
of the corpses. From its long hair, it seemed to be the body of a woman.
For a space, the lackey, moved by six parts of horror and four of
curiosity, forgot even to breathe. To borrow the words of an old
writer, he felt that “the hair on his head and body swelled.” Then
sticking the pine splinter into a crack in the floor, the hag took the
head at which she had been gazing and, just like an old monkey picking
lice from its young, began to pull out the long hairs one by one. They
seemed to yield to her pull.
With every hair that came out, the dread seemed to depart appreciably
from the heart of the lackey. And at the same time, intense hatred of
the old hag was little by little engendered. No, “of the old hag” may
not be just the right words. Rather his antipathy to all evil grew
stronger every minute. If some one at that time had broached afresh the
question which this man had been considering under the gate a little
while before, whether he should starve or turn thief, in all likelihood
he would have unhesitatingly chosen starvation. Thus fiercely, like the
splint of pine the old hag had stuck in the floor, blazed up this man’s
detestation of evil.
The lackey, of course, did not know why the old hag was pulling out the
hair of the dead. Consequently, he did not know, rationally, whether
her conduct should be set down as good or evil. But to him the pulling
of hair from the heads of the dead on that rainy night up in Rashōmon
was, on the face of it, an unpardonable crime. Naturally he had already
forgot that a little before he had had half a mind to turn thief
himself.
So, bracing his two feet firmly, he suddenly sprang from the ladder
up into the room. Then, grasping the plain handle of his sword, he
advanced with great strides up to the hag. Naturally she was startled
out of her wits.
With a glance at the lackey, she sprang up as if shot from a catapult.
“Wretch! Where are you going?” cursed the man, blocking her way, as she
stumbled among the corpses in a panic-stricken effort to escape.
All the same, she struggled to push him aside and get by. But
peremptorily he forced her back. For a moment, the pair scuffled in
silence among the corpses. But from the first there was no doubt of the
victor.
In the end, seizing one of her arms, the lackey twisted it and threw
her violently down. It was nothing but skin and bone, just like the leg
of a hen.
“What are you up to? Look you, what are you up to? Out with it! If you
don’t speak, you get this, see!”
And casting her away, he suddenly unsheathed his sword and brandished
the white flash of steel before her eyes. But the old hag held her
tongue. Her hands trembling, her shoulders heaving as she gasped for
breath, and her eyes so wide open that it seemed the balls must burst
from their sockets, she persisted in her silence like a mute. At this,
the lackey realized clearly for the first time that this old woman’s
life and death depended entirely upon his will. And before he was
aware, this realization had cooled the fires of detestation that up to
this time had blazed so fiercely in his heart. What remained was simply
that comfortable pride and satisfaction that follow upon a piece of
work wholly carried to completion. Then, looking down upon her, he said
in a slightly milder tone:
“I’m no official from the police commissioner’s office. I’m a wanderer
who happened to pass under this gate a little while ago. So you won’t
be tied with a rope and arrested. All I demand is that you tell me what
you’re doing up in this gate at this hour.”
At this, the old hag’s wide-staring eyes grew all the larger, and she
fastened them intently on the face of the lackey. They were sharp
red-lidded eyes like those of some bird of prey. Then she moved her
lips, practically one with her nose among the wrinkles, as if she were
chewing something. A sharply projecting Adam’s apple slid up and down
in her skinny throat. And at the same time, a voice like the croak of a
raven came pantingly from that throat and struck harshly upon his ears.
“I’m pulling out hair, pulling out this woman’s hair, because I’m going
to make wigs.”
The servant was disappointed at the unexpected ordinariness of her
answer. And at the same time, the hatred he had felt before, mingled
with a cold disdain, crept back into his heart again. And its
manifestations probably transmitted themselves to the hag. For still
holding in one hand the long hair she had pulled from the corpse’s
head, she mumbled her case in the croaking voice of a toad.
To be sure, it might be wicked to pull hair from dead bodies, for all
she knew. But these dead were mostly people who could well be treated
in such a way. For instance, this woman from whose head she had just
been pulling hair had cut snakes up into four-inch lengths and sold
them for dried fish in the military camps. Had she not fallen prey to
the epidemic and died, she might have been selling them yet. What was
more, the samurai had found her dried fish tasty and bought them all
up to eat with their rice. The hag did not find the woman’s conduct
blameworthy. Since she must otherwise have starved to death, she could
not well have helped it. Therefore, what she herself now did could
not be called bad either. Since this, too, must be done or she would
starve, it could not well be helped, and she thought this woman, who
well knew her dilemma, would surely forgive her for what she did. Thus,
by the large, ran the old hag’s explanation.
The lackey sheathed his sword and, with his left hand on the hilt,
listened in cold blood to her recital. Of course, his right hand was
busy fingering the festering carbuncle on his fiery cheek. But as he
listened, a certain courage was born within him. It was the courage
he had lacked under the gate a while before. And, moreover, it was a
courage tending to move in just the opposite direction from the courage
with which he had a little before mounted up into the gate and seized
the old woman. It was not only that he was no longer at a loss whether
to starve or turn thief. His emotions were now such that the idea of
starving to death had been driven from his consciousness as well-nigh
unthinkable.
“Really? Is that true?”
When the old woman had finished her tale, he questioned her in a
sneering voice. Then advancing one step forward, he suddenly removed
his right hand from his carbuncle and, seizing the hag by the collar,
said,
“Then I guess you won’t blame me for turning highwayman, will you? I,
too, must starve else.”
Like a flash he stripped off her kimono. Then, as she tried to cling
to his legs, he violently kicked her down upon the corpses. It was but
five paces to the head of the ladder. With the dark brown kimono under
his arm, he ran in a twinkling down the steep steps into the depths of
the night.
It was not long before the old woman, who had lain for a space like
one dead, raised her naked body up from among the corpses. Murmuring
and groaning, she crawled by the help of the light that still burned
to the top of the ladder. And from there, with her short white hair
hanging about her face, she peered down under the gate. Outside there
was nothing but black and cavernous night.
The lackey had already braved the rain and hurried away into the
streets of Kyōto to rob.