Rashomon- Japanese LocationLocation · Landmark"Gate of the Demons"

The Southern Gate

Rashōmon stood at the southern end of Suzaku Ōji, the central boulevard that ran north to the imperial palace. Built when the capital was established in 794 CE, the gate was a massive two-story timber structure whose upper gallery rose above the city wall. It marked the formal boundary between the ordered capital and the world beyond.

As Heian-kyō's population shifted northeast, the southern reaches emptied. Rashōmon decayed with them. Historical records note the gate's collapse in storms during the ninth and tenth centuries. Without maintenance or traffic, the ruin became a place where corpses were left in the upper story and thieves sheltered below.

The Oni of Rashōmon

Reports spread that an oni haunted the gate after dark. The warrior Watanabe no Tsuna, foremost retainer of Minamoto no Raikō, rode there alone one night. Something seized him from behind. He drew the sword Higekiri and cut through a monstrous arm. The oni, Ibaraki-dōji, chief lieutenant of Shuten-dōji, fled into the darkness without its limb.

Tsuna brought the severed arm home. Days later, a woman who appeared to be his aunt came to visit. She asked to see the arm. When he showed it, she snatched it up, revealed her true form, and vanished through the roof. Ibaraki-dōji had come back for what was hers.

The Old Woman

The Konjaku Monogatarishū preserves another tale from the gate. A man climbed to the upper story and found an old woman crouched among the dead, pulling hair from the corpses by lamplight. She was making wigs to sell. When he confronted her, she answered that the dead had no use for their hair and she had no other way to eat.