In A Grove

“True, when I caught him, he had fallen off his horse, and he was moaning and groaning on the stone bridge at Awataguchi.”

This detail speaks to the unknowable nature of the true events. Tajomaru appears here to be injured; the policeman assumes he was thrown from his horse, but it’s impossible to say whether that is true. Even before the three main characters present their accounts, the story establishes the theme of Truth and Reading the “Negative Space”.

“That settles it, then. I am sure this Tajomaru fellow is the murderer.”

This quote exemplifies the bias that can create an unreliable narrator. It is common for people to jump to conclusions about those who have reputations as criminals. However, even if readers can’t trust Masago or Takehiko to give fully accurate accounts, both supply reasonable explanations for how Tajomaru could have acquired the samurai’s possessions without murdering him.

“Last fall, people at Toribe temple found a pair of worshipers murdered—a woman and a child—on the hill behind the statue of Binzuru. Everybody said Tajomaru must have done it.”

Again, this statement by the arresting officer displays a biased assumption. His words imply that no real police work occurred; public consensus took the place of an investigation, and the officer here echoes those rumors.

“The second I saw them, a puff of wind lifted her veil and I caught a peek at her. Just a peek: that’s maybe why she looked so perfect to me—an absolute bodhisattva of a woman.”

A bodhisattva is someone who reaches the threshold of enlightenment but, rather than crossing over into Nirvana, returns to Earth to guide others. Due to the Christian presence in Japan (a minor theme in some of Akutagawa’s other stories), they are often associated with angels. Tajomaru’s figurative language here essentially means, “She had the face of an angel.” The attention the story pays to Masago’s veil reflects Akutagawa’s interest in how we use glimpses of people to construct narratives about who they “really” are.

“When I kill a man, I do it with my sword, but people like you don’t use swords. You gentlemen kill with your power, with your money, and sometimes just with your words.”

Tajomaru seemingly interrupts his confession to issue a manifesto on social justice. He accuses the police of figuratively killing men. Listing off power, money, and words as the three murder weapons, Tajomaru alludes to oppression, economic inequality, and propaganda. Assuming Tajomaru’s words reflect his true feelings, they suggest that he didn’t have much choice but to become a bandit and that his defiance stems from a desire to even the scales.

“It’s scary what greed can do to people, don’t you think?”

Tajomaru again hints at themes of wealth, social injustice, and Position in Society. Both Takehiko and (elsewhere) the bandit himself note that the samurai exhibited a sense of duty and honor. Yet this depiction of Takehiko as driven by greed is the only explanation the story provides as to how he was lured into the grove to begin with. Although the bandit is an unreliable narrator, the absence of other accounts makes his depiction of Takehiko the default in readers’ minds.

“‘Either you die or my husband dies. It has to be one of you. It’s worse than death for me to have two men see my shame. I want to stay with the one left alive, whether it’s you or him.’ That gave me a wild desire to kill her husband.”

Both Tajomaru and Takehiko portray Masago as bloodthirsty and quick to turn on her husband. This could stem from Akutagawa’s own biases toward women—his depictions of female characters are frequently negative—but it is important to remember that these accounts are unreliable. They may be a reflection of what the men (in this case Tajomaru) feel or want to believe rather than an accurate portrait of Masago.

“My sword pierced his breast on the twenty-third thrust. Not til the twenty-third: I want you to keep that in mind. I still admire him for that.”

Though he has tried to paint himself as a terror and a brigand, Tajomaru expresses a strong respect for his victim. That said, his honor is clearly on the line, and neither he nor Takehiko has anything to gain by claiming the battle was one-sided or ended by luck or fate. It seems unlikely that an untrained bandit could best a wealthy samurai in battle; however, by praising his opponent, Tajomaru builds himself up.

“After the man in the dark blue robe had his way with me, he looked at my husband, all tied up, and taunted him with laughter. How humiliated my husband must have felt! He squirmed and twisted in the ropes that covered his body, but the knots ate all the deeper into his flesh. Stumbling, I ran to his side.”

Masago depicts herself as remembering her place in society. Though she has just been raped, her first thought is not of herself but of her husband. She sees his discomfort and attempts to run to his side to comfort him. Like the others, Masago’s confession prioritizes her reputation—her honor—over accuracy, and it’s clear that she wishes to be remembered as a devoted wife.

“Of course his mouth was stuffed with bamboo leaves, so he couldn’t make a sound, but I knew immediately what he was saying. With total contempt for me, he said only, ‘Do it.’”

Readers may wonder why Masago didn’t simply remove the gag of leaves to talk with her husband. Thematically, however, none of these confessions concerns any character but the immediate narrator; in that context, what Masago’s husband is thinking doesn’t matter at all. Men and women often have wildly disparate notions of sex and rape. Though Takehiko’s account indicates that he might not have felt the way Masago suggests at all, the focus here is on Masago’s overwhelming sense that nothing can ever be right in her life again.

“Perhaps even Kanzeon, bodhisattva of compassion, has turned away from me for being so weak. But now—now that I have killed my husband, now that I have been violated by a bandit—what am I to do?”

Like those of her dead husband and the soon-to-be-executed bandit, Masago’s story comes to a tragic conclusion. By killing her husband without taking her own life, she has merely compounded the “shame” of being sexually assaulted.

“But I kept trying to signal her with my eyes: Don’t believe anything he tells you. He’s lying, no matter what he says. I tried to convey my meaning to her, but she just went on cringing there on the fallen bamboo leaves, staring at her knees.”

It is notable that Takehiko would mention this, as Akutagawa’s entire story is about conveying meaning and either failing or deliberately hiding the truth. Naturally, with his mouth gagged on bamboo leaves, Takehiko would struggle to express such a complex thought. The other two accounts also contain episodes involving obscured meaning, with Tajomaru lying to the samurai about the treasure and Masago trying to read her husband’s expression.

“‘Kill him! I can’t be with you as long as he is alive!’ Again and again she screamed as if she had lost her mind, ‘Kill him!’ Even now her words like a windstorm threaten to blow me headlong into the darkest depths. Have such hateful words come from the mouth of a human being before?”

What would have been a straightforward statement near the beginning of the story should by now cause the reader to be suspicious. It is clear that the samurai believes he understands what his wife intends by saying this, but no real conclusions can be drawn. The unfaithful temptress he describes is at odds with the woman who tried to fend the bandit off with a dagger. While it is possible that Takehiko is reading the situation correctly, it is also possible that he is not; perhaps his wife is trying to goad the bandit into fighting a superior fighter, as Tajomaru’s account describes.