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In Rashōmon, Akutagawa invests the Rashōmon gate with multiple meanings. A servant dismissed leaves by way of the gate of his master's house--fit symbol for the life of a law-abiding citizen. In contrast, the Rashōmon gate, once a glorious Southern entrance to the capital, is shown degraded, serving as a hideout for thieves and petty criminals. Unclaimed corpses are also abandoned there. The gate has become a world in itself, a microcosm representing the religious, moral and political chaos prevailing in twelfth-century Japan.
The gate also symbolizes the boundary between two worlds: an entrance from one level of existence to another. The servant, waiting for a break in the rain, must decide what he will do with his life. Does he emerge from the gate morally intact or corrupted? This is the central question posed by the author. He shows the man passing through a series of moral conflicts. By the time he vanishes into the depths of night, his descent into the bestial is complete. Kurosawa's film retains the original symbolic function of the gate. But he enriches it with a contemporary comparison--with the chaos of postwar Japan. Akutagawa's ruined gate, like the servant's flawed complexion, speaks for a world deformed beyond redemption. Kurosawa insists on a ray of hope, though signifying it ironically, by means of a gargoyle and a signboard still intact in blinding rain.
Importantly, the servant in the original short story is transformed into the commoner at the gate in the film. In the end, the commoner strips the clothes off a foundling and disappears in the rain.
The other original source, "In a Grove" is basically different versions of the story about the murder/rape that takes place in a forest. It begins with the testimony of a woodcutter questioned by a high police commissioner. Then an itinerant monk, a policeman, an old woman, a bandit and a wife give their own testimony. The short story concludes with the confession of a samurai/husband given through a medium. Akutagawa leaves the ending open, inviting the reader to bring his/her sense of closure. The bandit, the wife and the husband are directly involved in the crimes committed in the forest. When we play one version of the story against another, we can surmise that each person's self-image is completely different from the image conceived by others.
Kurosawa incorporates all these geographic settings of the stories into his film: the Rashōmon gate, the police station, and the forest. As might be expected, the police station, the place for each individual's testimony, is pervaded by light. This scene is very important cinematically. Through his camera work Kurosawa knows how to manipulate the spectator's point of view. The priest, the woodcutter, the wife and the bandit all seated in a row across the screen. They are shot from the eye-level of the police chief taking their testimony. He is, of course, off screen. However, the camera angle elevates us to the position of the chief, the objective judge. Each person is avoiding the eye of the camera, as if afraid of the judgment. Thus, the camera's position encourages us, the viewers, to search beyond the surface in order to distinguish reality from appearance. In other words, each viewer is the judge. He/she must play over version of the story against another and come up with a meaningful interpretation of these incongruous stories given by the four major characters: the samurai, his wife, the bandit and the woodcutter.
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