Reflection on The Akira Kurosawa’s Film Rashomon

I have always been interested in Japanese culture, art and cinema. Probably this interest began because I grew up watching Japanese cartoons and animations when I was a kid. But when I went to Japan for the first time in 2013 my interest for Japanese film and art grew even greater. Last summer I travelled around Japan for three months to try to understand more about Japanese culture and gather some first hand experiences of my own.

Also, for the last two years during my study program I have been studying Polly Lang in Japanese. I must say it is a really challenging decision for me studying Japanese, especially learning to how to read, for which I need to learn three different alphabets. But learning Japanese helps me understand Japanese art culture and cinema in a much better way.

Film camera meet to Japanese filmmakers in the late 19th century couple of years after it began to grow very different ways compared to the Western filmmakers. The length of their films for example is much greater than in other countries.

Japanese cinema is very fascinating for me, especially in its style and narration.

I am particularly interested by the styles and narration of the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. All the films Kurosawa has made are masterpieces for me. His films have had still a wide influence over contemporary films all over the world. I believe his method of narration in his films not only allows viewers to gain a different perspective and understanding but also represents a revolution in contemporary film storytelling.

Arguably, Rashomon for me has been the most influential of all Kurosawa’s films because it asks a question that lies near the heart of all cinema: what is reality? All around the world today, any cinema has used similar permutations of the style of Rashomon a million times, probably without even being aware of it.

According to Hutchinson Akiro Kurosawa was one of the most “Western” of Japanese filmmakers. After its release the Rashamon became globally accepted.

The film begins with rain pouring down onto the eponymous ancient ruins of a grand structure that was once the gate of the city, but now stands in a terrible and abandoned quarter. This gate represents the main setting of the story frame, in which a peasant, a woodcutter and a priest are talking about the strange murder of the samurai while waiting for the rain to stop.

During in the film, we watch four different aspects of what happened - a rape followed by a murder - first by a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) who has witnessed the crimes, a bandit (Toshiro Mifune) who is the one who committed the rape of the wife of a samurai, then the samurai wife (Machiko Kyo) who has been raped, and the samurai ghost or spirit (Masayuki Mori), who speaks through psychics after his murder. All of them are presented with four different realities, each of them telling the audience different stories which are totally contradictory with one another. Rashomon is one of the prime examples of minimalism in cinema. The elegant cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa and the simple plot, masterfully directed by Kurosawa, presents the viewer with two different stories : what we are seeing looks real, but none of it can be representing the truth.

Though there are flaws in the representations of the wife in Rashomon¸ the film has been able to stand the test of time and be regarded as a classic because of the innovative techniques employed by Kurosawa that raise questions about objective truth in the human experience. The underlying message to be learned is that we cannot trust humans, or even the camera to reflect the truth.

Rashomon is a film which allows you to come up with your own ending. You are told four stories, all completely different from one another, but about the same thing. As the viewer, you are to come up with your own truth. Also you are then forced to see why people may lie or embellish, whether it be to keep themselves out of trouble or make themselves seem as if they are a better person than they really are.

In human cultures deeply rooted across the globe, women in society are often accepted as second class. This film, made and released in 1950, is set in 11th Century Japan, and makes us understand what little improvement there has been in women’s social status in the past seventy years. The film narrative shown human values are more likely to be based on the time of the filming, not the historical customs of 11th century Japan which the film is set in. Either way women today still face the same problems as the samurai wife, making the film’s issues still relevant in today’s society.