“Rashōmon” is a story of Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. The story recounts the encounter between a servant and an old woman in the dilapidated Rashōmon, the southern gate of the then-ruined city of Kyoto, where unclaimed corpses were sometimes dumped. The man, a lowly servant recently fired, is contemplating whether to starve to death or to become a thief to survive in the barren times.