In a Grove

Characters
The Woodcutter
The first character to give testimony to the magistrate, the unnamed woodcutter is the person
who found Takehiro’s body in the bamboo grove. The woodcutter details how the dead body
looked.
Kanazawa no Takehiro
Kanazawa no Takehiro is a twenty-six-year-old samurai whose body is found in the bamboo
grove after he dies of a chest wound. He wears a pale blue robe and is described by Masago’s
mother as a kind man without enemies. Though the woodcutter says Takehiro wears a Kyoto-
style hat, Masago’s mother says Takehiro is in fact in the service of Wakasa Province.
The Magistrate
Translated in some versions as the police commissioner, the magistrate is a figure of police and
judicial authority in Kyoto. He is never directly quoted or described in the story, but his
questioning is inferred through the answers that characters deliver in their testimony.
Masago
Masago is Takehiro’s nineteen-year-old bride. She is described by many characters as beautiful,
and by her mother as having a man’s boldness. After Masago is raped by Tajōmaru, she flees the
grove and confesses her version of events at a temple.
Traveling Priest
The second character to give testimony, the traveling priest confirms that he saw Takehiro and
Masago before they entered the grove the day before. He also gives specific details about their
appearances and laments Takehiro’s death.
Policeman
The third character to give testimony, the policeman—translated in some versions as a bounty
hunter working for the police—captures Tajōmaru and tells the magistrate of the bandit’s infamy
as a rapist. He recommends that the magistrate question Tajōmaru.
Tajōmaru
A notorious bandit and rapist who roams the area around Kyoto, Tajōmaru admits to raping
Masago and killing Takehiro. Tajōmaru delivers his confession without remorse and suggests
that the magistrate’s sins are no different from his.
Old Woman (Masago’s Mother)
The fourth character to give testimony to the magistrate, Masago’s mother details Masago and
Takehiro’s personalities and grieves over her son-in-law’s death. Before breaking down in grief,
she urges the magistrate to find Masago.
Spiritual Medium
Takehiro’s spirit gives his account of events through a nameless, undescribed medium.
Summary
Set in pre-modern Japan, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story “In a Grove” is a collection of
testimonies and confessions that concern the death of a twenty-six-year-old samurai named
Kanazawa no Takehiro.
The first section of the story comprises four testimonies given to a magistrate, a Kyoto city
official who is investigating the mysterious death. The woodcutter who found the body that
morning speaks first, confirming the location of the deserted bamboo grove where he found the
corpse and describing the dry chest wound in detail. Next, a traveling Buddhist priest says he
saw a man, a woman, and a horse the day before just after noon. Next, a policeman testifies that
he has caught a bandit named Tajōmaru, who is infamous for raping women around Kyoto. The
policeman suggests Tajōmaru is responsible and that the magistrate should Question him. The
fourth testimony is delivered by the young woman’s mother, who confirms that her daughter
Masago and Masago’s husband Takehiro—the dead samurai—would have been traveling in the
hills the day before. She breaks down crying, worried for her missing daughter’s safety.
The narrative switches to Tajōmaru’s voice as he casually confesses to having killed Takehiro.
He details how Masago’s beauty led him to execute a plan: first leading Takehiro into a bamboo
grove under the pretense that he would sell him treasure stolen from an aristocrat’s burial mound,
Tajōmaru then tied Takehiro up and raped Masago. To his surprise, she asked him to kill either
himself or her husband, saying she would be with the one who lived. Tajōmaru untied Takehiro
and challenged him to a sword fight that ended in Tajōmaru stabbing Takehiro in the chest on his
twenty-third thrust. Meanwhile, Masago escaped, so Tajōmaru fled the forest with Takehiro’s
weapons and rode Masago’s horse until he was bucked off and subsequently caught. Tajōmaru is
resigned to his fate and asks that he be executed by hanging at the tree outside the prison.
The next account comes from Masago herself, delivered as a confession in the Kiyomizu
Temple. In her version of events, Masago details the contempt that she saw in Takehiro’s eyes
after Tajōmaru raped her. She went to her husband’s side but Tajōmaru kicked her to the ground
and she lost consciousness. When she awoke, the bandit was gone; she concluded that she and
her husband needed to die, now that her honor had been disgraced. She found the dagger she had
used to try to fend off Tajōmaru and, with his permission, plunged the dagger into her husband’s
chest. She tried to stab herself in the neck and throw herself into a pond but ultimately failed to
commit suicide. After her rape and her failed attempt to commit joint suicide, Masago asks the
religious authority to whom she speaks what she should do.
The final testimony is delivered by Takehiro’s spirit, as told through a medium. Takehiro’s
version contradicts Masago’s and Tajōmaru’s accounts by claiming that Masago asked the bandit
to kill her husband. United in their shock at Masago’s betrayal, the men discussed whether
Tajōmaru should kill her; this show of respect makes Takehiro forgive Tajōmaru for his crimes.
While Takehiro hesitated to answer the bandit, Masago escaped into the grove. Tajōmaru untied
the rope binding Takehiro to the cedar tree and fled with Takehiro’s weapons. Exhausted,
Takehiro took Masago’s dagger and stabbed himself. He slowly bled as he watched the sun set
over the grove; in the dark, an unidentified character walked up to him and withdrew the knife.
The story ends with Takehiro saying he then sank into the darkness between lives. With no
unifying narrative presence to clarify the contradictory events presented in the testimonies, the
reader is left without a clear idea of how Takehiro died, only possibilities.
Metaphors:
A drop of dew, a flash of lightning
At the end of his testimony, the traveling priest compares the life of a human being to a drop of
dew and a flash of lightning—metaphors for the fleetingness of existence. While the drop of dew
is delicate and commonplace, a flash of lightning is violent and spectacular. When considered in
concert, the metaphors speak to the miraculous nature of existence while simultaneously
recognizing life’s insignificance and ubiquity.

Witnessed my shame
During her confession, Masago uses metaphoric and euphemistic language to say that her
husband witnessed her being raped by Tajōmaru. She is so ashamed of the violation that she
insists Takehiro must die, as she cannot bear the thought of him living with what he had seen.

The darkness between lives

At the end of his testimony, Takehiro describes himself as sinking “once and for all into the
darkness between lives.” This darkness is a metaphor for death and the spirit realm from which
he narrates his testimony. It is significant that he describes the darkness as “between lives,” as it
suggests he is in a liminal space before being reborn, as determined by the Buddhist cycle of
death and rebirth.
Symbols and Allegory
Testimony and Confession (Motif)
In lieu of a narrative authority, “In A Grove” is told entirely through first-person testimonies and
confessions delivered by the story’s characters. This distinctive and recurrent structural device
enables characters to give narrative accounts that contain discrepancies and contradictions. As a
result, the story manages to reject any conclusive notion of truth in favor of presenting reality as
an entanglement of subjective points of view.
Masago’s Beauty (Motif)
First described by the priest as veiled, Masago’s beauty is a recurring subject in the story,
touched on by her mother and Tajōmaru. When the breeze lifts her veil and the bandit catches
sight of her face, he is driven wild with the desire to rape her. This criminal intention sets off the
chain of events that leads to Takehiro’s body being found in the grove. Takehiro also comments
on his wife’s beauty when she is spellbound by Tajōmaru’s words; in this instance, her beauty is
used to contrast with her subsequent betrayal.
Objective Truth (Allegory)
The entire story can be viewed as an extended metaphor for the impossibility of an objective
account of reality. The varying accounts of the murder at the heart of “In a Grove” serve to
illustrate the manner in which humans are perhaps unable or unwilling to reach an entirely
factual and unbiased consensus on life itself.
Dream-like states (Motif)
“In a Grove” departs from a realist depiction of reality in its dream-like treatment of certain
events. When Masago thrusts the dagger into her husband’s chest, she describes herself as
drifting somewhere between dream and reality. She is also said to have lost consciousness and
awoken a number of times throughout the story, leading a reader to question whether her
perspective is influenced by dream-like imagination. Takehiro himself describes the spectacle of
his wife struggling to escape the forest as akin to “some kind of vision,” and the “darkness
between lives” from which he narrates is a spirit realm between reality and death that is not
dissimilar to the liminal space of dreams.
Bamboo Grove (Symbol)
The deserted bamboo grove from which the story takes its name is rich with symbolic meaning.
As a plant capable of providing nutrition and shelter, known for both strength and pliability,
bamboo has long been considered sacred. The hollowness of bamboo shoots has a particular
significance as a symbol of Buddhist enlightenment, which requires a person to embrace
emptiness in order to contain the universal spirit, thereby being released from suffering and freed
from the cycle of rebirth. Bamboo’s empty form suggests that objects do not take shape around
what they contain but around what they lack. With this in mind, the structure of bamboo can be
said to mirror the structure of the story, which takes shape around the absence of objective truth.