Popular culture[edit]

The book itself also plays a part in the 1999 movie Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, directed
by Jim Jarmusch.
The book is the inspiration for an instrumental rock tune of the same name composed by
Japanese instrumental guitarist Takeshi Terauchi and originally played by Japanese instrumental
rock group Takeshi Terauchi & Blue Jeans on their 1972 album, Rashomon.[1]
The manga Bungo Stray Dogs features a character named after Akutagawa with heavy
references to Rashōmon.
The book is assigned for Modern Japanese high school coursework and quoted in the
manga After the Rain.
The graphic novel Rashomon: A Commissioner Heigo Kobayashi Case by Victor Santos (2017)
is also inspired from the short stories of Akutagawa and the eponymous movie of Kurosawa as
well as by the forty-seven rōnin episode, rendered in the eponymous book by