“Rashomon”
In line with the Strain Theory, the ‘old woman’ partakes the wig business as a result of the inevitable economic strain that she has found herself him. The ‘old woman’ concedes, “Indeed, making wigs out of the hair of the dead may seem a great evil to you, but these that are here deserve no better. This woman, whose beautiful black hair I was pulling, used to sell cut and dried snake flesh at the guard barracks, saying that it was dried fish. If she hadn't died of the plague, she'd be selling it now. What she did couldn't be wrong, because if she hadn't, she would have starved to death. There was no other choice. If she knew I had to do this in order to live, she probably wouldn't care." The structural strain throughout Kyoto does not give its populace the option of appraising the morality of their engagements. The foremost intent for every person is to transcend the macro-crisis. Participating in aberrant acts such as trading snake and the hairs of death bodies are the courses that validate the intention (of survival). Accordingly, the Kyoto residents are victims of the straining. The woman’s depiction of the dead woman’s trade (of selling snake) appeals to the servant’s pathos. She uses the pathos to persuade the servant that it is the quest for survival that incentivizes her actions and not wickedness. Furthermore, discrediting the dead woman’s morality rationalizes that her body is violated once she is deceased because she exploited others when she was alive.
Akutagawa utilizes the “Survival for the Fittest” Maxim to expound the ripple effect of Structural Strain. The servant, asks the old woman: "Then it's right if I rob you. I'd starve if I didn't" after which “He tore her clothes from her body and kicked her roughly down on the corpses as she struggled and tried to clutch his leg. Five steps, and he was at the top of the stairs. The yellow clothes he had wrested off were under his arm.” The strain that the characters go through follows a chain whereby the dead woman sales snakes for survival, but since she is not fit, she passes away. After her death, the old woman pulls her hair to warrant her survival. Eventually, the servant turns out to be fitter than the woman as he subdues her and makes away with her clothes, which he could exchange for money to sustain himself. Therefore, survival validates all the deviant resolutions in “Rashomon.”
“Yam Gruel”
In the context of Relative Deprivation Theory, Goi’s assertion: "I wonder if I shall ever eat my fill of yam gruel" infers that he holds that he is relatively deprived on the yam gruel because “his share of yam gruel was proportionately small.” The portion of yam gruel that Goi gets, at the banquet, is not copious to satiate him. Goi’s aspiration to lay off his relative deprivation stimulates him to undertake an unfamiliar journey with Toshihito. According to Akutagawa, “If his craving for yam gruel had not encouraged him, he would probably have left Toshihito and returned to Kyoto alone.” The desire boys up Goi’s intrinsic motivation to go on with the extensive journey. If Goi had not felt to be relatively deprived, then he would not have bothered to embark on a journey whose destination he was not acquainted with.
Goi’s repulsion for yam gruel at Tsuruga relates to the model of Diminishing Marginal Utility. Akutagawa observes, “Frankly, he had not wanted to eat even one bowlful of yam gruel even at the beginning. With great endurance he managed to do justice to half a pitcherful of it. If he took any more, he thought he would throw it up before swallowing it.” The utility that Goi gets from the first bite of the Yam gruel bears the utmost implication. Goi’s utility starts from the moment he witnesses the preparation of the yam gruel. Subsequent consumption of yam gruel is futile because utility condenses which means that Goi could vomit the yam gruel should he constrain himself to carry on with eating the yam. Evidently , it is the reality of Diminish Marginal Utility that guided the belittled servings of the yam gruel during the banquet. Therefore, ‘filling up’ is different from utility. Focusing on ‘filling up’ would trigger throwing up as it will be in antagonistic to utility.
