Note: This story was first published in January 1922 in the monthly literary magazine 新潮, Shinchō, "New tide". The original Japanese title of this story, 藪の中, is transcribed as Yabu no naka in the Revised Hepburn notation, and means literally "in the middle of the bush". It is composed of 藪, yabu, "bush", "thicket", の, no, "in" and 中, naka, "middle".

Synopsis: This is an early modernist short story, as well as a blending of the modernist search for identity with themes from historic Japanese literature, and as such is perhaps the iconic work of Akutagawa's career. It presents three varying accounts of the murder of a samurai, Kanazawa no Takehiro, whose corpse has been found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto. Each section simultaneously clarifies and obfuscates what the reader knows about the murder, eventually creating a complex and contradictory vision of events that brings into question humanity's ability or willingness to perceive and transmit objective truth [from Wikipedia].