Stairway to hell: Two translations of “Rashōmon”

In my previous notes on Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Rashōmon and Other Stories (translated by Takashi Kojima and published in 1952 by Charles E. Tuttle Company), I mentioned that there is a more comprehensive anthology of Akutagawa’s works, the 2006 Penguin edition that is translated by Jay Rubin.

Some three or four anthologies of Akutagawa’s stories have appeared throughout the years, but the Rubin translation is considered the most comprehensive as the 18 stories in that collection are grouped according to themes and periods of the Japanese author’s writings. For example, the late literary period of Akutagawa, which is considered autobiographical, is not represented in the Kojima translation, which gathers only half a dozen stories.

As to the faithfulness to the original of Kojima’s English translation, I don’t know. Having no knowledge of the source language, one goes by the approximations and compositional choices of the translator. But here are two comparisons, from the title story “Rashōmon” (1915), between Kojima's and Rubin's versions, respectively:

A. Kojima (1952)

“The rain, enveloping the Rashōmon, gathered strength and came down with a pelting sound that could be heard far away. Looking up, he saw a fat black cloud impale itself on the tips of the tiles jutting out from the roof of the gate.

“He had little choice of means, whether fair or foul, because of his helpless circumstances. If he chose honest means, he would undoubtedly starve to death beside the wall or in the Sujaku gutter. He would be brought to this gate and thrown away like a stray dog. If he decided to steal … His mind, after making the same detour time and again, came finally to the conclusion that he would be a thief.”

A. Rubin (2006)

“The rain carried a host of roaring sounds from afar as it came to envelop Rashōmon. The evening darkness brought the sky ever lower until the roof of the gate was supporting dark, heavy clouds on the ridge of its jutting tiles.

“To do something when there was nothing to be done, he would have to be prepared to do anything at all. If he hesitated, he would end up starving to death against an earthen wall or in the roadside dirt. Then he would simply be carried back to this gate and discarded upstairs like a dog. But if he was ready to do anything at all—

“His thoughts wandered the same path again and again, always arriving at the same destination. But no matter how much time passed, the “if” remained an “if.” Even as he told himself he was prepared to do anything at all, he could not find the courage for the obvious conclusion of that “if”: All I can do is become a thief.”

B. Kojima (1952)

“As quietly as a lizard, the servant crept up to the top of the steep stairs. Crouching on all fours, and stretching his neck as far as possible, he timidly peeped into the tower.

“As rumor had said, he found several corpses strewn carelessly about the floor. Since the glow of the light was feeble, he could not count the number. He could only see that some were naked and others clothed. Some of them were women, and all were lolling on the floor with their mouths open or their arms outstretched showing no more signs of life than so many clay dolls. One would doubt that they had ever been alive, so eternally silent they were. Their shoulders, breasts, and torsos stood out in the dim light; other parts vanished in shadow. …”

B. Rubin (2006)

“With all the stealth of a lizard, the servant crept to the top tread of the steep stairway. Then, hunching down and stretching out his neck as much as possible, he peered fearfully into the upper chamber.

“There he saw a number of carelessly discarded corpses, as the rumors had said, but he could not tell how many because the lighted area was far smaller than he had thought it would be. All he could see in the dim light was what some of the corpses were naked while others were clothed. Women and men seemed to be tangled together. It was hard to believe that all of them had once been living human beings, so much did they look like clay dolls, lying there with arms flung out and mouths wide open, eternally mute. Shoulders and chests and other such prominent parts caught the dim light, casting still deeper shadows on the parts lower down.”

The world of difference between the two versions is enough for the reader to question the artificiality of construction in translations. You can judge for yourself. But for me, one criterion to evaluate them is to determine which better preserved the “comedy” of the situation, whether or not it is meant to be humorous. In that respect, and based on the excerpts above, I lean toward the choices of the first translator, even if there are some editorial decisions on the part of Kojima that condensed some of the passages.

In the first instance, the image of a “fat black cloud” being “impaled on the tips” of jutting tiles looks the more sinister and grotesque than “dark, heavy clouds” being “supported on the ridge” of the jutting tiles. In the second comparison, a neck stretched “as far as possible” is somehow quirkier than a neck stretched out “as much as possible.” In “as far as possible,” it is as if the neck is elastic and can hover closer to what it is trying to recognize in the dark.

I’m not sure either which is the more literal translation, but Kojima’s bring a more surprising take on the pathos of the corpses “lolling on the floor” like clay dolls than Rubin’s corpses “tangled together.” And Kojima executes a punchier line with this: “One would doubt that they had ever been alive, so eternally silent they were.” Now who can top the absurdity of that sentence?

Rubin’s anthology of eighteen stories may have been the more comprehensive in terms of the quantity and scope of selection. But I find that, at least in the story of “Rashōmon” in English, it isn’t the more jaunty adaptation. I prefer Kojima’s English which exhibits better compositional choices, wit, and deadpan (pun intended) humor. Several more side by side comparisons of the passages of the two translators will allow us to spot other revealing choices of words and contexts.

Does it mean that Kojima’s version is superior to Rubin’s? I don’t know. But I think it is the version that will make Akutagawa turn more listless in his grave.

(Image from a detail of the front cover of Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories (2006). Illustration by Yoshihiro Tatsumi.)

Rashōmon and Other Stories (Akutagawa Ryūnosuke)

Consider the first story. A Police Commissioner interviews seven individuals regarding an alleged crime of murder:


- The first witness is a woodcutter who discovered the body of the dead man;

- the second witness is a travelling Buddhist priest who met the man and his wife prior to the incident;

- the third witness is a policeman who arrested the only suspect to the alleged crime;

- the fourth, an old woman, the dead man’s mother-in-law;

- the fifth is the bandit who confessed to the crime;

- the sixth is the wife of the dead man; and

- the final witness, the dead man himself speaking through a medium.


That’s it. We have the sketch of the story told from several points of view. The depositions of the first four witnesses overlap with each other, telling of what appears at first as a crime of passion. The last three witnesses are directly involved in the man’s death.

The novelty of this story, “In a Grove,” lies in the inconsistencies between the testimonies of the persons involved. The actual circumstances of the man’s death, which initially appears to be an obvious case of murder, become more and more complex and murky as different versions are presented. The elements of a successful crime (motive, opportunity, and means) are turned upside down in every successive telling. We do not know who is telling the truth. Everyone is complicit.

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, the author of this short story, is a Japanese master of the form. In his hands, a short story is a short story. That is to say, it is quick. His words are efficient without sacrificing the complexity of a plot. His tales are suffused with nuance and concrete details. His themes are large themes. His main concerns are basic. He is interested in the ambiguities of human choice, the uncontrollable passions suddenly flaring, the travails of the outcast, and the futility of moral justifications.

My copy of Rashōmon and Other Stories is a reprint of the second edition of the book first published in 1952. It contains six pieces, all translated by Takashi Kojima, and with an introduction by Tanizaki Jun'ichirō translator Howard Hibbett.

In the book's preface, Takashi Kojima said that the six stories are selected with the aim of collecting the “finest and most representative writings” of Akutagawa. For a prolific writer such as Akutagawa, a mere representation of his best works in six servings, out of the more than a hundred stories he completed, appears to be non-representative at all. But there can be no doubt that the six pieces – six master pieces – are among his finest. Any collection that contains the first two in this book, “In a Grove” and “Rashōmon,” is a book to be treasured. Though it does not contain his other famous stories (“Hell-Screen” and “The Nose”), the book is a perfect sampler of Akutagawa’s literary output.

The “most comprehensive” collection of Akutagawa’s stories is said to be the Penguin compilation Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories (2006), translated by Jay Rubin and introduced by no less than Murakami Haruki. Murakami mentions in his introduction that Akutagawa is his third personal favorite among “Japanese national writers,” after Sōseki Natsume and Tanizaki. Three of the collected stories here – “Yam Gruel”, “The Martyr”, and “Kesa and Morito” – are not included in the Penguin edition. Maybe that’s a loss for that edition because these three are real gems.

When I watched the 1950 film Rashōmon, directed by Akira Kurosawa, in the UP Film Center more than ten years ago, during a retrospective of films by two Asian directors (Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray), I was not aware that it was based on two short stories by Akutagawa. The film was incontestably one of the finest produced in history. This six-story edition perhaps appeared as a kind of a movie tie-in edition of the film that was fast gaining critical and mass acclaim at that time.

I was dumbstruck during the screening of the film. Even now, I could still visualize the husband’s fiery eyes and stone-hard gaze on his wife after the bandit pursued and tricked the couple. Reading the source story was like reading a natural script of the film. It’s like watching again the entire film, a déjà vu experience.

The plot of the film was essentially that of “In a Grove,” while its landscape of waste and despair was borrowed from the story “Rashōmon”. Both “In a Grove” and “Rashōmon” deal with human selfishness: the manipulation of truth to justify oneself and the subjectivity of good at the behest of human avarice.

In the first story, the characters are consumed by the need to explain or justify their behavior before the High Police Commissioner, to bear witness to something they have “seen.” The film masterfully assigns the role of the High Police Commissioner to the audience, in the same way that the reader "acts" as the Commissioner who listens to all the versions of the story. Each version is tailored in such a way that it casts its teller in the role of the underdog or the wronged.

The “Rashōmon” story, like the first, is also about the relational value of truth and goodness. It's about a servant laid off from his job and left to wander around the gates of Rashōmon, an area notorious as hideout for thieves and dumping ground of corpses. In the face of this abject situation, the former servant is driven to do an “evil” thing in order to survive.

There lies the paradox of “Rashōmon”. When people are reduced to living at the margins, they are forced to do things that are considered to be taboo. They will die if they don’t. When life contracts into uselessness, subjectivity becomes a precondition of existence, “good” and “evil” following the theory of relativity.

Akutagawa’s stories (at least in the Kojima translation) are deceptive because of their sketchy quality. They are not what you might call polished writing. Here and there are awkward sentence constructions. I don’t know if it is due to the translation, but a certain clunky quality of the prose is consistently displayed throughout. As if these are just rough drafts of a master who cannot be bothered to perfect his trade? And yet behind the rough outlines of the plotting are universal truths.

The pieces contain truths that most other forms took very long to develop. Akutagawa’s mastery is for a compression of details and a compacted intensity of feelings. Their power and impact are derived not from the flashes of technique but from a rhythm borne out of hurried recognitions. The fragility of life's convictions and principles dawn on us when the temple of the familiar was not found dwelling where it is supposed to. Is it in the inner sanctum of men? There is in fact no temple for Akutagawa, only a harsh condition of living, a bleak view of humanity, a state of nature characterized only by uncertainty.

Greed, hate, covetousness, pride, lust – these are the vices pictured in several stories in this collection. One can even add gluttony (to exaggerate a character’s craving in “Yam Gruel”) and get the picture of Akutagawa’s apparent subject matter – the seven deadly sins. His source of conflict is often perversion (e.g., “lust for lust’s sake” in "Kesa and Morito").

Characters pander to their base instincts. They tenaciously hold on to their own needs and wants, pursuing their wishes come what may. They are driven to it, their nature drove them to it. The environment entraps their soul.

Akutagawa’s is the kind of writing that makes your heartbeat race fast as you read it. And the kind that stops the heartbeat by some lately introduced complication. His stories, almost always period pieces, do not lose their contemporary feel. They are timeless and alive. They are like "the sublimity of life", which culminates, as one of the stories proclaims, “in the most precious moment of inspiration.”