Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story, “In a Bamboo Grove,” tells contradictory versions of the same story surrounding the rape of a woman named Masago and the murder of her husband, Takehiro. Akutagawa tells this story through the testimonies and confessions of several different characters, including a woodcutter, a traveling priest, a policeman, Masago’s mother, a bandit named Tajōmaru, Masago, and the late Takehiro’s spirit as interpreted by a medium. The characters reveal unique voices through their different perceptions of the crimes they recount to the magistrate, whose duty it is to discern fact from fiction and ultimately bring about justice. However, the magistrate inhabits a sort of liminal space between presence and absence in the story; unlike the other characters, he has no dialogue of his own, so he joins the reader as a passive but seemingly omniscient recipient of the statements. Lacking a conventional voice in the story, he must therefore manifest as a character in other ways. Akutagawa artfully characterizes the magistrate using second-person point of view to create an interactive space for characters to reveal small details about his attitudes and beliefs; in other words, Akutagawa’s use of “you” allows the characters to uncover the magistrate’s otherwise hidden character (Edwards) by placing them in direct conversation with him. Ultimately, the subtle characterization of the magistrate emphasizes the ways in which both he and the reader are vulnerable to biases in spite of their apparent omniscience and authority in the story.
The interactive, second-person point of view in this story places the readers in the magistrate’s unique position of power and influence. It becomes our duty to question the testifiers alongside him and decide what we believe to be true. That being said, we remain passive in this investigative work, so we must rely on the syntax of the characters’ testimonies to reveal the magistrate’s questions and thought processes. For instance, Masago’s mother says, “Yes, Your Honor, my daughter was married to the dead man,” and “No, Sir, he was a very kind man” (Akutagawa 12). From these statements, we can infer that the magistrate asked the old woman about her relation to Masago and Takehiro and whether Takehiro had any enemies. They demonstrate the ways in which the magistrate works to compile facts from the different testimonies. The woodcutter and policeman even repeat the magistrate’s questions back to him, asking “Did I see a sword or anything?” (Akutagawa 10), or “The time, Sir? (Akutagawa 11). This rhetorical question-and-answer format allows the magistrate and the reader to interact with the testifiers while maintaining what appears to be objective distance from the crimes, themselves. This liminal space between presence and absence that the magistrate and readers come to occupy grants them the role of all-knowing judge in the story.
The respect with which many of the characters treat the magistrate further distinguishes him as god-like in terms of power and morality. The woodcutter, the traveling priest, the policeman, and Masago’s mother repeatedly address him as “Your Honor” and “Sir,” reaffirming his status as the authority in this scenario. Responding to a question from the magistrate regarding the size of the horse at the crime scene, the priest humbly confesses, “I’m a priest after all. I don’t know much about horses” (Akutagawa 11). This meek admittance of a lack of knowledge emphasizes the discrepancy of class and power that exists between him and the receiver of his testimony, reinforcing the magistrate’s supposedly omniscient capabilities. Similarly, when the policeman testifies, he gently suggests that the magistrate “question [Tajōmaru] about [the pair of worshippers murdered at Toribe Temple]” (Akutagawa 12); this proposal brings to the reader’s attention that the magistrate’s power extends beyond simply the crimes involving Masago, Takehiro, and Tajōmaru. Rather, he is an all-knowing, all-powerful, god-like character capable of identifying the truth in all crimes that occur within the universe of the story.
In contrast with the characters who treat the magistrate with great reverence, Tajōmaru addresses him informally and calls his motives into question, characterizing him as immoral and power-hungry. The bandit’s confession begins almost immediately with a tone of self-defense as he says, “Now, wait just a minute—you can torture me all you want, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know” (Akutagawa 13). This line implies that the magistrate has condemned Tajōmaru before he even has a chance to confess to his crimes. One could argue that the bandit deserves such treatment given his poor reputation, but “relying on someone’s reputation—positive or negative…does not equate to an objective understanding of the truth” (Hu). Thus, this apparent threat on the magistrate’s part calls his reliability as an objective judge into question.
Tajōmaru never refers to the magistrate by any title such as “Your Honor” or “Sir” like the other characters, as if to dissolve the power imbalance that exists between them. Instead, he condemns him as a “gentleman” (Akutagawa 13, 15), arguing that men like him “kill with [their] power, with [their] money, and sometimes just with [their] words: [they] tell people [they’re] doing them a favor. True, no blood flows, the man is still alive, but [they’ve] killed him all the same” (Akutagawa 13). In Tajōmaru’s mind, the magistrate carries a sense of false moral superiority that he uses to take advantage of the less powerful. This scathing evaluation lowers the magistrate from the godly moral center of the story to a simple mortal “bound by the subjectivity of [his] mind” (Hu), just like the other characters in the story. Additionally, it forces the readers to grapple with our own vulnerability to manipulation, as we, too, likely used the previous testimonies to form negative opinions about Tajōmaru prematurely (Hu). Ultimately, Tajōmaru’s discussion of power paradoxically furthers and disrupts our conflation with the magistrate; while it forces us to recognize the impossibility of perceiving an objective truth, it also invites us to separate ourselves from the ways in which the magistrate may be biased.
Akutagawa further reveals the magistrate’s potential biases in the parenthetical commentary that appears throughout Tajōmaru’s confession. These parentheticals mirror the liminal space that the magistrate occupies in the story by revealing his attitudes towards certain characters without explicitly placing him in direct conversation with them. For instance, the magistrate makes note of “(A sarcastic smile)” (Akutagawa 13) from Tajōmaru following his biting criticism of gentlemen. However, given the judging figure’s preexisting aversion towards the bandit, the reader cannot be sure whether Tajōmaru truly smiled in this manner, or whether the magistrate simply perceived this behavior following the verbal attack on his moral character. He also notes Tajōmaru’s “(Sullen excitement)” and “(Cheerful grin)” (Akutagawa 15) in the way he speaks about killing Takehiro, which seems to incriminate the bandit even more by emphasizing his wild, bloodthirsty nature. The unnecessary insertion of these descriptors seems to discourage the possibility of alternative interpretations from the reader because it defines the tone of Tajōmaru’s message for us, demonstrating the inevitability of the magistrate’s bias regardless of his attempts at objectivity.
The magistrate’s parentheticals function similarly in Masago’s penitent confession and the testimony from her mother. For instance, the following note punctuates the old woman’s emotional testimony: “(Here, the old woman broke down and was unable to go on speaking)” (Akutagawa 12). That the magistrate describes her as “breaking down” rather than simply “crying” indicates that he feels a certain level of sympathy for her; his language carries an emotional charge that undermines his impartiality as a judging figure and reveals his human limitations. Similarly, in Masago’s confession, he makes note of her “(Forlorn smile)” and “(Sudden violent sobbing)” that follow the mention of her failed suicide attempts, as if to underscore the penitent nature of her confession and flag physical signs of sincerity. The voluntary inclusion of these observations reveals the weight the magistrate places in physical manifestations of grief or remorse; he seems more likely to judge in favor of those he views as earnest in their expression of emotions.
Additionally, the magistrate repeatedly makes note of the medium’s “(Long silence[s])” and “(explosion[s] of derisive laughter)” (Akutagawa 18) that interrupt Takehiro’s testimony. These observations do not necessarily reveal much about the magistrate’s feelings toward the dead man or his mouthpiece, but they do emphasize the ways in which human perception is inherently flawed. Although Takehiro’s testimony “should be the most reliable of them all…[it] is arguably the least concrete because it is the only account of them all to pass through two brains before delivery” (Hu). Whether the silence and laughter come directly from his spirit or are part of the medium’s interpretive process remains unclear, which points to the larger question of to what extent it is “reliable to trust second-hand information, if it is reliable at all?” (Hu).
Although these parentheticals are entirely unnecessary to the forward movement of the story, Akutagawa actively chooses to include them. Why? That these observations appear only in the statements from Masago, her mother, Takehiro, and Tajōmaru emphasize these characters’ closeness to the crime and the weight of their words in comparison to those of the priest or woodcutter, who are simply passersby. Additionally, very form of this commentary interrupts the testimonies, directing the readers’ attention away from the present speaker and immersing us more fully in the mind of the magistrate. However, it does so in a way that impedes our already limited ability to discern fact from fiction; while it is often our job as readers to infer a speaker’s tone, the magistrate’s parenthetical commentary interprets tone for us, forcing us to think about certain testimonies in certain ways. Thus, not only must we consume the testimonies with a critical eye, but we must also consider the ways in which the magistrate’s own biases work to produce these supplementary observations; in short, these parentheticals represent a way for the magistrate to kill “just with [his] words” (Akutagawa 13).
Ultimately, “In a Bamboo Grove” questions the very nature of reality, perception, and power. Akutagawa uses the initial testimonies in the story to establish both the magistrate and the reader as all-knowing, all-powerful judges; although we receive contradictory information from a variety of unreliable witnesses, our authority grants us the power to discern the truth. Akutagawa begins to deconstruct that power, however, with Tajōmaru’s confession. The bandit’s refusal to blindly abide by the magistrate’s rules forces the readers to step back and question not only the credibility of the testifiers, but also that of the magistrate; we learn that we cannot trust him, nor can we trust ourselves, because our human limitations keep us from perceiving an objective truth. This gradual unraveling of the magistrate’s reliability continues more subtly in the parenthetical commentary that appears in the testimonies of the characters most central to the story, revealing the ways in which he fails to live up to the omniscience required of his powerful position; at the end of the day, he is human just like Akutagawa, his readers, and the other characters in the story, meaning he is inherently vulnerable to persuasion and tethered to subjectivity. Even if an objective reality exists, the human mind is incapable of perceiving it.
Works Cited
Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke. “In a Bamboo Grove.” Rashōmon And Seventeen Other Stories, by Jay Rubin et al., Penguin, 2006, pp. 10–19.
Edwards, Kim. “Icebergs, Glaciers, and Arctic Dreams: Developing Characters.” Creating Fiction: Instruction and Insights from Teachers of the Associated Writing Programs, by Julie Checkoway, Story Press, 2001, pp. 44–55.
Hu, Eric. “In a Bamboo Grove: An Analysis on the Nature of Truth and Human Perception.” 故郷へ, 29 Jan. 2013, furusatoe.tumblr.com/post/41761060829/in-a-bamboo-grove-an-analysis-on-the-nature-of.