Watanabe of Rashomon Gate

At a gathering in Kyoto, Watanabe’s companion Hojo repeats a rumor: after sunset an ogre comes to Rashomon Gate and seizes whoever passes. Watanabe dismisses the report but agrees to test it. He rides to the gate alone in a storm, leaving a paper signed by his companions as proof that he went. Finding no one there, he turns home. Something catches his helmet from behind. Watanabe feels a hairy arm, draws his sword, and cuts at it. The ogre appears and fights him, then flees when it cannot overpower him. Watanabe pursues but cannot catch it. Back at the gate he finds the severed arm, takes it home, and seals it in an iron-banded box.

Later, an old woman arrives, claiming that she nursed Watanabe as a baby. He welcomes her, and she asks to see the trophy. Watanabe refuses because the ogre might return for it. The woman presses him, asking whether he distrusts his old nurse; at last he opens the box. She seizes the arm and reveals herself as the ogre. Watanabe draws his sword, but the creature springs through the roof and escapes into the clouds with its arm. The tale ends without Watanabe killing it. The ogre is too afraid to trouble Kyoto again, so the people can once more go out after dark. In Ozaki’s telling, Watanabe’s victory is the ending of the threat, not the monster’s death.