Being a big fan of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, it was only natural for me to seek out the film's source material which is two short stories by Japanese author Ryunosuke Askutagawa: "Rashomon" and "In a Grove". The latter provides the inspiration for the bulk of the film with testimony in a murder trial being given by multiple people while the former provides the basis for the scenes at the Rashomon gate where the woodcutter, priest, and commoner shelter from the storm.
However, the story from which Kurosawa took his film's name bears slight resemblance to his film. The setting is the same but taking shelter at the famed gate is a samurai's servant who was recently downsized. There he encounters an old woman who is pulling the hair from corpses to make wigs. It is her only way of making of living. The pair debate the merits of doing what is right vs. doing what it takes to survive.
"In a Grove" is a rather simple story but at the end you're left wondering who is telling the truth, if anyone. Since we aren't given any background on the characters and all we know is what they tell the police, there's no way to know if any or all of them are being intentionally deceitful or if they are in some way or another deluded. Perhaps they are lying to themselves.
This latter idea is portrayed very clearly in "The Dragon". It begins in a meta kind of way with a state official decides to gather with the proles and have them tell stories. An elderly potter goes first. He tells the tale of a priest with a very large red nose who is constantly being made fun of by his fellow clergymen. And so he decides to play a prank on them by posting a sign next to a pond which says that a dragon will arise from it on a certain date. The prank, at first, fools the locals but news of the event spreads and, on the day prescribed by his sign, a huge crowd has gathered to witness the spectacle. In the end, nearly everyone, including the priest, are convinced they saw a dragon emerge from the pond. Sometimes we see what we want to see.
Askutagawa loves to write about the outcasts of society. It could be the poor or it could be those who are mean and unrefined. They don’t fit into the aristocracy neatly or at all. The priest had his big nose while the servant in "Rashomon" had a big pimple on his face. Goi, the protagonist of "Yam Gruel", is described as being "extremely homely and sloppy in appearance". He's a very low ranking samurai in the service of a regent. Like the priest in "The Dragon", people make fun of Goi a lot but it doesn't help that he is also a coward, retreating from foul-mouthed children in the street.
And he loves yam gruel which is served but once a year at a special feast. Goi always ends up with a very small portion and he makes it his life's task to have a meal of it so he can eat it until he is content.
I found myself really liking Goi. His cowardice made him a rather pathetic character but there was something about his single-mindedness in pursuit of a simple pleasure that I couldn't resist. He's harmless so why is everyone making fun of and laughing at him? I guess I just felt a lot of sympathy for him. The ending of the story is a bit of a mystery to me. Eventually Goi is indulged and given enough yam gruel to fill his belling many times over. I was expecting him to almost be force fed the stuff but he wasn't. Instead having his dream fulfilled is an anti-climax. He eats rather modestly and sits back thinking that it's not the kill but rather the thrill of the chase. He realizes he was more content as a pitiful creature wanting yam gruel than as someone shown kindness by his superiors and given all the gruel he could eat.
Akutagawa wrote in the early 20th century and I'm sure I'd get something more out of his stories if I knew more about that time in Japanese history. It's not that one can't get anything out his stories without understanding the context in which they were written, but I do wonder what he was commenting upon. Akutagawa explicitly says at one point that he rejects the school of naturalism in literature. Not having been a lit major in college, exactly how this attitude plays out is a bit beyond me but I suspect that his unwillingness to judge is part of it. He writes with detachment, plainly describing the events of the story. There's no attempt to look back on the character's lives and find out what made them as they are. It is enough that they are themselves. I'd also like to know more background to determine if choosing to place his stories in classical Japan is somehow a commentary about his own time.
More reading is obviously required.
Fans of Kurosawa's film will delight in the source material here. But, more generally, Akutagawa is interesting because he gives no easy answers, if any at all. His stories are like photographic portraits in that you get this glimpse of someone at a certain point but that's about it. You're left to fend for yourself in determining the past. The stories leave the reader asking many questions. "In a Grove" is perhaps the most explicit in leaving the reader in the dark but all the stories here do that to one degree or another. The only commentary provided is an antagonism towards the status quo. Maybe Akutagawa is inviting the reader to judge themselves. Are you part of the status quo or outside of it? Why?
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