A Close Reading of “Rashōmon”: The Author Says, “No One Knows Where the Servant Has Gone.”

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Other Title
  • 「羅生門」精読
  • 「羅生門」精読 : 「下人の行方は、誰も知らない」と書く「作者」
  • 「 ラショウモン 」 セイドク : 「 ゲニン ノ ユクエ ワ 、 ダレ モ シラナイ 」 ト カク 「 サクシャ 」
  • ――「下人の行方は、誰も知らない」と書く「作者」――

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Abstract

<p>Now Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's “Rashōmon” is a standard story in high school textbooks, but the guideline for teaching it has often changed over time. In 1963, for example, it was based on Seiichi Yoshida's interpretation of the story which focused on the servant's psychology to emphasize the theme of our inherent egoism. In 1965, however, Yukio Miyoshi denied such a pessimistic view of human nature and insisted that the story was more complicated and profound. His argument was so influential that it greatly helped “Rashōmon” to be regularly used as teaching material for the kokugo program since the curriculum reform in 1973. Recently in his “third term” theory Minoru Tanaka seems to offer a new code of reading the text in the classroom. He demonstrates the unreadability of the servant's psychology to point out that such an aporia of reading constructs us into reader-subjects. In this article I will closely read the text with the three keywords “law,” “morality,” and “faith” to consider its importance as teaching material in terms of linguistic functions.</p>

Journal

  • Japanese Literature

    Japanese Literature 65 (4), 13-24, 2016-04-10

    Japanese Literature Association

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