Once in the evening, a servant fired by the owner waited for the rain under the gates of Rashomon. Sitting on the top rung, he kept touching the boil, which popped up on his right cheek. Although the gates stood on the main street, there was no one besides this servant, only a cricket sat on a round pillar. Over the past two or three years, disasters have struck Kyoto one after another - then a hurricane, then an earthquake, then a fire, then hunger - that’s the capital that has been desolate. In the abandoned gates of Rashomon, foxes and badgers now lived. They found shelter for thieves. It was even commanded to bring and throw corpses here. After sunset, something terribly made here, and no one dared to approach close to the gate.

The servant, who had nowhere to go, decided to climb into the tower above the gate and see if it was possible to hide there for the night. Glancing fearfully inside the tower, he saw an old woman there. Squatting, she pulled out the hair of one of the corpses in the light of a torch. The servant rushed at the old woman, twisted her arms and angrily asked what she was doing here. The frightened old woman explained that she was pulling her hair out into wigs. She is sure that the woman whose hair she had torn when the servant entered would not have condemned her, for she herself had cut the serpent into strips during her life and sold it to the palace guards, posing as dried fish. The old woman did not believe that this woman acted badly - otherwise she would have died of hunger.The old woman tore her hair from the corpses into wigs in order to avoid starvation, which means that her act should not be considered bad either. The story of the old woman instilled in the servant, who before was ready to die of hunger rather than become a thief, determination. “Well, don’t blame me if I rob you! And I, too, will have to starve to death otherwise, ”he growled and tore off the kimono from the old woman. Putting it under his arm, he ran down the stairs, and since then no one has seen him.