While the title of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's short story “In a Grove” might not be familiar, the story might be. In 1922 Sincho magazine published “In a Grove” as a sort of ancient Japanese detective novel, with the mystery at the center of the narrative presented in the form of trial testimony from various witnesses. Almost thirty years later, Akutagawa's story was adapted into a film which was given the title of a previous story completely independent of the author: "Rashomon". Although the plot of the film is taken directly from “In a Grove,” it is from Akutagawa’s “Rashomon” that the framing device of the stories told under a large city gate was derived. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The story structure in which the same event is interpreted through the eyes of assorted witnesses who provide their own slightly different perspective has since become almost something of a subgenre in its own right. At the time of Akutagawa's story, however, the concept of a narrative without any single objective truth was still exceptional enough to be considered confusing by many editors and, later, producers. “In a Grove” prefigures postmodern fiction with its fragmented narrative and multiple possibilities for objective truth achieved through the subjective analysis of facts. The story thus places Akutagawa far ahead of his modernist colleagues working simultaneously in Western literature. However, while “In a Grove” looks far into the future manifesting a 21st-century sensibility about the potential of absolute truths, the writer also looked back in time for inspiration. American writer Ambrose Bierce's 1907 short story “The Moonlit Road” was a story with which Akutagawa was familiar, and elements of the older tale reveal that familiarity. “The Moonlight Road” offers the possibility of discovering the truth about the murder of a woman from the testimony of three narrators: the dead woman's son, a man who could be her husband and, through a medium, the spirit of the dead woman herself. Since its initial publication and subsequent film adaptation by noted Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, the influence of “In a Grove” has far outstripped its readership. While obviously not the first piece of fiction to experiment with telling the same event from multiple perspectives, its narrative structure and thematic conceit have irrefutably transformed “In a Grove” into one of Hollywood's most sought-after standard narrative devices. Observation point and deceived! they are built entirely in the form of “In a Grove”. Indeed, Hoodwinked! it even takes the form of the story of testimony in a police investigation. Unlike Kurosawa's interpretation in Rashomon, however, the mystery is completely solved, but the big bad behind it all turns out to be a character who plays the testimony of each of the remembered witnesses, but is not one of the witnesses. While these two examples and many others take “In a Grove” as the underlying screenplay template to tell the entire narrative, many other films take Akutagawa's concept more as a reference that can be spotted in a single sequence. For example, the song "I Remember it Well" by Gigi and the entire double narration shot of the song "Summer Loving" in the movie Grease owe a debt to "In a Grove". Please note: this is just a sample. Get a custom article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay The List of TV Shows.