Movies - Rashomon

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	Movies - Rashomon

Rashōmon (羅生門) is a 1950 Japanese motion picture directed by Akira Kurosawa (in collaboration with Kazuo Miyagawa) and starring Toshiro Mifune.

The movie's theme is the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of obtaining the truth about an event from conflicting witness accounts. Rashōmon can be said to have introduced Kurosawa and Japanese cinema to Western audiences, and is considered one of his masterpieces.

In English and other languages, "Rashomon" has become a by-word for any situation wherein the truth of an event becomes difficult to verify due to the conflicting accounts of different witnesses. In psychology, the film has lent its name to the Rashomon effect.

Plot of the movie

Based on two stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (Rashōmon provides the setting, while In a Grove provides the characters and plot), it describes a rape and murder through the widely differing accounts of four witnesses, including the perpetrator and, through a medium, the murder victim. The story unfolds in flashback as the four characters—the bandit Tajōmaru (Mifune), the murdered samurai Kanazawa-no-Takehiro (Masayuki Mori), his wife Masago (Machiko Kyō), and the nameless Woodcutter (Takashi Shimura)—recount the events of one afternoon in a grove. But it is also a flashback within a flashback, where the woodcutter or priest has told what each individual said at the court. Each story is self-serving, and all are mutually contradictory, leaving the viewer unable to determine the truth of the events.

The Woodcutter

The unnamed Woodcutter (木樵り Kikori) claims he found the body of the victim (the Samurai)three days ago while looking for wood in the forest.

The Priest

The traveling Buddhist priest (旅法師 Tabi Hōshi) claims that he saw the Samurai and the Woman three days before the murder happened. (Since his report does not tell anything about the murder, and does not contradict the other reports, he is presumably telling the truth.)

The Bandit

Tajōmaru (多襄丸), a notorious brigand (盗人 nusubito), claims that he tricked the Samurai and his wife to step off the mountain trail with him and look at some swords he was selling. When he had them far off the trail, he separated them, and tied the Samurai to a tree. He planned to rape the woman, but she willingly gave in to him instead. The woman, filled with shame, then begged him to either kill her or her husband, to save her from the guilt and shame of knowing two men. He honorably set the Samurai free so they could duel. Tajōmaru was the victor and the woman ran away. At the end of the story he is asked about the dagger: he says that, in the confusion, he forgot all about it, and that it was foolish of him to leave behind such a valuable object.

The Samurai's Wife

The Samurai's wife, Masago (真砂), claims that after she was raped by Tajōmaru, who left her to weep, she begged her husband to forgive her; but he simply looked at her coldly. She then freed him and begged him to kill her so that she would be at peace. He continued to stare at her coldly, with dagger in hand; and then she fainted. She recalls awakening some time later by a nearby lake, and attempting to drown herself.

The Samurai

Through a medium (巫女 miko), the deceased Samurai, Kanazawa-no-Takehiro (金沢の武弘), claims that after he was captured by Tajōmaru, and after the bandit raped his wife, Tajōmaru asked her to travel with him. She accepted and asked Tajōmaru to kill her husband so that she wouldn't feel the guilt of knowing two men. Tajōmaru, shocked by this request, grabbed her, and gave the Samurai a choice of letting the woman go or killing her. The woman fled, and Tajōmaru, after attempting to recapture her, gave up and set the Samurai free. The Samurai then killed himself with his own dagger. The ghost then mentions that somebody removed the dagger from his chest; upon hearing this, the woodcutter is startled, and claims that the dead man must be lying, because he was killed by a sword.

The Woodcutter (again)

The woodcutter then confesses that his earlier view was a lie and says that Tajōmaru raped the Samurai's wife, and then begged the weeping woman to marry him. She instead freed her husband and asked the two men to duel, saying that she would go with the victor. The Samurai called her a coward, and she replied that the two men were cowards for not fighting. Tajōmaru and the Samurai fought, but the struggle only showed how clumsy they were. Nonetheless, Tajōmaru won the duel, and the woman fled as he chased her.

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