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In a Grove (藪の中, Yabu no naka), also translated as In a Bamboo Grove, is a Japanese short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa first published in 1922. It was ranked as one of the "10 best Asian novels of all time" by The Telegraph in 2014.
About 150 meters off the Yamashina stage road. It’s an out-of-the-way grove of bamboo and cedars. The body was lying flat on its back dressed in a bluish silk kimono and a wrinkled head-dress of the Kyoto style. A single sword-stroke had pierced the breast.
A tale of a crime told from different perspectives, In A Grove is a classic of Japanese literature and a precursor to Rashomon. Learn about the plot, themes, characters, and historical context of this influential story.
A series of epistolary testimonies are given before the High Police Commissioner of Kyōto surrounding the discovery of a murdered man’s body in a grove. As in any detective story, we learn the events from the head and tail instead of in linear fashion.
The story of "In a Grove" is simple. A samurai is dead, his wife has disappeared, and a notorious robber has been arrested. The story proceeds by assembling diverse testimonies to the events that are given in answer to the questions of the high police commissioner. There is no narrative frame.
The story is set in a bamboo grove on the outskirts of Kyoto during the Heian period in Japan. The secluded and eerie atmosphere of the grove serves as a crucial backdrop for the unfolding of the conflicting testimonies and the murky events surrounding the murder and rape.
"In a Grove" is an early modernist short story consisting of seven varying accounts of the murder of a samurai, Kanazawa no Takehiro, whose corpse has been found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto.
