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Rashomon

Rashomon is a 1950 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa, working in close collaboration with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. It stars Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo and Masayuki Mori.

The film is based on two stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa ("Rashomon" provides the setting, while "In a Grove" provides the characters and plot). Rashomon can be said to have introduced Kurosawa and Japanese cinema to Western audiences, and is considered one of his masterpieces. The film has an unusual narrative structure that reflects the impossibility of obtaining the truth about an event when there are conflicting witness accounts.

The film depicts 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 Tajomaru (Toshiro Mifune), the murdered samurai Kanazawa-no-Takehiro (Masayuki Mori), his wife Masago (Machiko Kyo), and the nameless Woodcutter (Takashi Shimura)—recount the events of one afternoon in a grove. But it is also a flashback within a flashback, because the accounts of the witnesses are being recalled by a woodcutter and a priest. Each story is mutually contradictory, leaving the viewer unable to determine the truth of the events.

An unnamed Woodcutter claims he found the body of the victim (the Samurai) three days previously while looking for wood in the forest. Upon discovering the body the Woodcutter flees in a panic to search for the authorities.

A traveling Buddhist priest claims that he saw the Samurai and the Woman the same day 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.)

Tajomaru, a notorious brigand, claims that he tricked the Samurai to step off the mountain trail with him and look at some swords he was selling. In the grove he tied the Samurai to a tree, then returns to fetch the woman. He planned to rape the woman, but she willingly gave in to him instead, in view of her husband. The woman, filled with shame, then begged him to duel to the death with her husband, to save her from the guilt and shame of knowing two men. He honorably set the Samurai free so they could duel. In Tajomaru's recollection they fight skillfully and fiercely, but in the end Tajomaru is the victor and the woman runs away. At the end of the story he is asked about an expensive dagger owned by the samurai's wife: 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.

Masago (Machiko Kyo) at the courtThe Samurai's wife, Masago, claims that after she was raped by Tajomaru, 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, and then she fainted with dagger in hand. She awakens to find her husband dead with the dagger in his chest, supposedly an accident that happened when she fell over. She recalls attempting to drown herself some time later by a nearby lake.

Through a medium, the deceased Samurai, Kanazawa-no-Takehiro, claims that after he was captured by Tajomaru, and after the bandit raped his wife, Tajomaru asked her to travel with him. She accepted and asked Tajomaru to kill her husband so that she wouldn't feel the guilt of knowing two men. Tajomaru, shocked by this request, grabbed her, and gave the Samurai a choice of letting the woman go or killing her ("At this", the dead samurai recounted, "I almost forgave the bandit."). The woman fled, and Tajomaru, 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 (or more precisely, in the frame sequence after this part of the trial flashback is recounted), the woodcutter is startled, and claims that the dead man must be lying, because he was killed by a sword.

The woodcutter then confesses that his earlier view was a lie and that he did in fact witness the murder. He says that Tajomaru raped the Samurai's wife, and then begged the weeping woman to marry him. She instead freed her husband, then continued weeping. The Samurai said that he was unwilling to die for a woman such as her, and that he would mourn the loss of his horse more than the loss of his wife. At this, the woman was provoked into a rage, demanding that the two men duel in order to win her (that "a woman's love is won by swords"), and expressing her exhaustion at the role she was asked to play. At her insistent goading, Tajomaru and the Samurai began to fight, but in the Woodcutter's recollection the struggle shows them as clumsy and frightened, each man leaving much to be desired by way of both courage and combat skill. After an extended sequence of fighting, Tajomaru won the duel, plunging his sword into the chest of the Samurai as he was attempting to scamper away in the bushes. After killing the Samurai, Tajomaru advanced on the woman, attempting to grab her. The woman fled as he chased her, limping, and the recollection closed.

At the temple, the woodcutter, priest, and commoner are interrupted from their discussion of the woodcutter's account by the sound of a crying baby. They find the baby abandoned, and the commoner takes the clothes protecting the baby as it lay in a basket. The woodcutter reproaches the commoner for stealing from the abandoned baby, but the commoner retorts that he knows the truth: that the woodcutter, too, is a thief, having stolen the dagger used in the murder of the samurai. The commoner claims that all men are selfish, and all men are looking out for themselves in the end.

These deceptions and lies shake the priest's faith in the goodness of humanity. He is brought back to his senses when the woodcutter reaches for the baby in the priest's arms. After initially snapping at the woodcutter ("Are you trying to take all that he has left?") he relents when the woodcutter explains that he has six other children at home, and that the addition of one more (the baby) would not make life any more difficult. This simple revelation recasts the woodcutter's story and the subsequent theft of the dagger in a new light. The priest gives the baby to the woodcutter, saying that the woodcutter has given him reason to continue having hope in humanity. The film closes on the woodcutter, walking home with the baby. The rain has stopped.

Kurosawa's admiration for silent film and modern art can be seen in the film's minimalist sets. There are only three settings in the film: Rashomon gate, the woods and the courtyard. The gate and the courtyard are very simply constructed and the woods are simply a real wood.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Rashomon".

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