한국일본학회

This paper analyzes the linguistic structure of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Rashōmon (first published in Teikoku bungaku [Imperial Literature] in November 1915). This text adopts a metafictional structure: the narrator calls himself the author, and while recreating a Heian period story based on an “old record,” touches upon this story from his present-day perspective. In this metafictional text it is clear that the world of the literary work is not the “real world” (three-dimensional space) but the “world of ideas” of the “author” (four-dimensional space). This makes it possible for the “author” to narrate (amidst his own ideas) from a first-person perspective as well as from a third-person perspective. Furthermore, due to the story unfolding in this “world of ideas,” it becomes apparent that the relationship between the author and the story’s characters is not a für ein anderes (“I-him [story character]” relationship) but a für sich (“I-I [story character]” relationship). In Rashōmon, amidst the “author’s” enlarged self-consciousness, the narrator, based on a relationship that is “self-created and self-performed” (performing the characters oneself and criticizing them oneself)—or “self-posed and self-answered” (making readers ask questions themselves and answering them themselves)—develops the story monodramatically. This paper concretely analyzes these characteristics of Rashōmon’s linguistic structure.