Rashomon

The plot begins in Heian era Kyoto. A woodcutter and a priest are sitting beneath the Rashōmon city gate to stay dry in a downpour when a commoner joins them and they begin recounting a very disturbing story about an assault and murder that took place. Neither the woodcutter nor the priest understand how everyone involved could have given radically different accounts of the same event, with all three of the people involved indicating that they, and they alone, committed the murder.

The woodcutter claims he found the body of a murdered samurai while looking for wood in the forest, three days earlier. He first found a woman's hat (which belonged to the samurai's wife), then a samurai cap (which belonged to her husband), then cut rope (which had been used to bind the husband), then an amulet. Finally, he discovered the body, upon which he fled to notify the authorities. The priest claims he saw the samurai traveling with his wife the same day the murder happened. Both men were summoned to testify in court, where a fellow witness presented a captured bandit, who claimed to have followed the couple after coveting the woman when he glimpsed her in the forest.

Tajōmaru, the bandit and a notorious outlaw, claims that he tricked the samurai to step off the mountain trail with him to look at a cache of ancient swords he had discovered. In the grove, he tied the samurai to a tree, then brought the samurai's wife there with the intention of assaulting her. She initially tried to defend herself with a dagger but was overpowered and then seduced by the bandit. The wife, ashamed, begged Tajōmaru to duel her husband to the death, to save her from the guilt and shame of having two men know her dishonor. Tajōmaru honorably set the samurai free and dueled with him. They fought skillfully and fiercely, with Tajōmaru praising the samurai's swordsmanship. In the end, Tajōmaru killed the samurai, causing the wife to flee in terror. At the end of his testimony, he is asked about the expensive dagger used by the samurai's wife. Tajōmaru claims he forgot about it in the confusion after the fight, and laments leaving it behind, as the dagger's pearl inlay made it very valuable.

The wife's testimony tells a different story. She claims that Tajōmaru left immediately after assaulting her. Once he was gone, she begged her husband for forgiveness, but he simply stared at her coldly. She freed him and begged him to kill her so that she would be at peace, but he continued to stare at her with loathing. His contempt distressed her so greatly, she fainted while standing over her husband, with the dagger in her hands. She awoke to find her husband dead, the dagger in his chest. In shock, she wandered through the forest until she came upon a pond. She attempted to drown herself, but failed.

Lastly, the court hears the story from the perspective of the samurai, as told through a medium. The samurai claims that after the assault, Tajōmaru asked the wife to travel with him. She accepted, but asked Tajōmaru to first kill her husband so that she would not feel the guilt of belonging to two men. Shocked, Tajōmaru grabbed her and gave the samurai the choice: let her go or kill her. The wife broke free and fled, with Tajōmaru giving chase. Tajōmaru failed to recapture her, gave up, and returned to set the samurai free. Tajōmaru apologized, and then departed. Humiliated, the samurai killed himself with his wife's dagger. Later, he felt someone remove the dagger from his chest, but could not tell who.

Back at Rashōmon (after the trial), the woodcutter claims that all three stories are falsehoods. The woodcutter says he witnessed the assault and murder, but declined the opportunity to testify because he did not want to get involved. According to the woodcutter, after the assault, Tajōmaru begged the samurai's wife to marry him. Instead, she freed her husband, hoping that he would kill Tajōmaru. However, the samurai refused to fight, explaining to Tajōmaru that he would not risk his life for a spoiled woman. The wife criticizes both men, calling them cowards: Tajōmaru because he would not kill the samurai to have her, the samurai because he would not kill Tajōmaru to avenge his own honor. She urges them to fight, claiming that real men fight for a woman's love. The two men fight, but it is a clumsy, terrified, and pitiful duel, nothing like what Tajōmaru describes in his testimony. Ultimately, Tajōmaru won through a stroke of luck. The wife fled after the duel, and Tajōmaru could not catch her due to a minor injury. He took the samurai's sword, and limped away.

At Rashōmon gate, the woodcutter, the priest, and the commoner are interrupted by the sound of a crying baby. They find a baby abandoned in a basket, with a kimono and an amulet. The commoner steals the kimono and amulet. The woodcutter reproaches the commoner for stealing from an orphaned child and attempts to stop him. The commoner overpowers the woodcutter, and chastises him as a hypocrite: the commoner correctly deduces that the true reason the woodcutter declined to testify is because he's the one who stole the valuable dagger. The commoner leaves Rashōmon gate, explaining that all men are motivated only by self-interest.

Meanwhile, the priest has been attempting to soothe the baby. After the commoner departs, the woodcutter attempts to take the baby. The priest violently recoils: his experiences at the trial and at Rashōmon gate have destroyed the priest's faith in humanity. The woodcutter explains that he intends to raise the child; he already has six of his own. This revelation recasts the woodcutter's story and motivations, restoring the priest's faith in humanity. As the woodcutter prepares to leave with the child, the rain stops and the clouds part, revealing the sun.

Kurosawa felt that sound cinema multiplies the complexity of a film:

Cinematic sound is never merely accompaniment, never merely what the sound machine caught while you took the scene. Real sound does not merely add to the images, it multiplies it.

Regarding Rashomon, Kurosawa said,

I like silent pictures and I always have... I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember in this way: one of the techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film."[7]

Accordingly, there are only three settings in the film: Rashōmon gate, the woods, and the courtyard. The gate and the courtyard are very simply constructed and the woodland is real. This is partly due to the low budget that Kurosawa gained from Daiei.

When Kurosawa shot Rashomon, the actors and the staff lived together, a system Kurosawa found beneficial. He recalls,

We were a very small group and it was as though I was directing Rashomon every minute of the day and night. At times like this, you can talk everything over and get very close indeed.[8]

The cinematographer, Kazuo Miyagawa, contributed numerous ideas, technical skill, and expertise in support for what would be an experimental and influential approach to cinematography. For example, in one sequence, there is a series of single close-ups of the bandit, then the wife, and then the husband, which then repeats to emphasize the triangular relationship between them.[9]

The use of contrasting shots is another example of the film techniques used in Rashomon. According to Donald Richie, the length of time of the shots of the wife and of the bandit are the same when the bandit is acting barbarically and the wife is hysterically crazy.[10]

Rashomon had camera shots that were directly into the sun. Kurosawa wanted to use natural light, but it was too weak; they solved the problem by using a mirror to reflect the natural light. The result makes the strong sunlight look as though it has traveled through the branches, hitting the actors. The rain in the scenes at the gate had to be tinted with black ink because camera lenses could not capture the water pumped through the hoses.[11]

Robert Altman compliments Kurosawa's use of "dappled" light throughout the film, which gives the characters and settings further ambiguity.[12] In his essay "Rashomon," Tadao Sato suggests that the film (unusually) uses sunlight to symbolize evil and sin in the film, arguing that the wife gives in to the bandit's desires when she sees the sun. However, Professor Keiko I. McDonald opposes Sato's idea in her essay "The Dialectic of Light and Darkness in Kurosawa's Rashomon." McDonald says the film conventionally uses light to symbolize "good" or "reason" and darkness to symbolize "bad" or "impulse." She interprets the scene mentioned by Sato differently, pointing out that the wife gives herself to the bandit when the sun slowly fades out. McDonald also reveals that Kurosawa was waiting for a big cloud to appear over Rashomon gate to shoot the final scene in which the woodcutter takes the abandoned baby home; Kurosawa wanted to show that there might be another dark rain any time soon, even though the sky is clear at this moment. Unfortunately, the final scene appears optimistic because it was too sunny and clear to produce the effects of an overcast sky.

Stanley Kauffmann writes in The Impact of Rashomon that Kurosawa often shot a scene with several cameras at the same time, so that he could "cut the film freely and splice together the pieces which have caught the action forcefully as if flying from one piece to another." Despite this, he also used short shots edited together that trick the audience into seeing one shot; Donald Richie says in his essay that "there are 407 separate shots in the body of the film ... This is more than twice the number in the usual film, and yet these shots never call attention to themselves."

The film was scored by Fumio Hayasaka, who is among the most respected of Japanese composers.[13] At the director's request, he included a bolero during the woman's story.[11]

Due to setbacks and some lost audio, the crew took the urgent step of bringing Mifune back to the studio after filming to record another line. Recording engineer Iwao Ōtani added it to the film along with the music, using a different microphone.[14]

Rashomon was released in Japan on August 24, 1950.[18] It was released theatrically in the United States by RKO Radio Pictures with English subtitles on December 26, 1951.[18]

Rashomon has been released multiple times on DVD. The Criterion Collection issued a Blu-ray and DVD edition of the film based on the 2008 restoration, accompanied by a number of additional features.[19]

The film performed well at the domestic Japanese box office, where it was one of the top ten highest-earning films of the year.[20] It also performed well overseas, becoming Kurosawa's first major international hit.[21]

In the United States, the film grossed $46,808 in 2002[22] and $96,568 during 2009 to 2010,[23] for a combined $143,376 in the United States between 2002 and 2010.

In Europe, the film sold 365,300 tickets in France and Spain,[24] and 8,292 tickets in other European countries between 1996 and 2020,[25] for a combined total of at least 373,592 tickets sold in Europe.

Although it won two Japanese awards,[20] most Japanese critics did not like the film. When it received positive responses in the West, Japanese critics were baffled; some decided that it was only admired there because it was "exotic", others thought that it succeeded because it was more "Western" than most Japanese films.[26]

In a collection of interpretations of Rashomon, Donald Richie writes that "the confines of 'Japanese' thought could not contain the director, who thereby joined the world at large".[27] He also quotes Kurosawa criticizing the way the "Japanese think too little of our own [Japanese] things".

US release poster for Rashomon

The film appeared at the 1951 Venice Film Festival at the behest of an Italian language teacher, Giuliana Stramigioli, who had recommended it to Italian film promotion agency Unitalia Film seeking a Japanese film to screen at the festival. However, Daiei Motion Picture Company (a producer of popular features at the time) and the Japanese government had disagreed with the choice of Kurosawa's work on the grounds that it was "not [representative enough] of the Japanese movie industry" and felt that a work of Yasujirō Ozu would have been more illustrative of excellence in Japanese cinema. Despite these reservations, the film was screened at the festival.

Before it was screened at the Venice festival, the film initially drew little attention and had low expectations at the festival, as Japanese cinema was not yet taken seriously in the West at the time. But once it had been screened, Rashomon drew an overwhelmingly positive response from festival audiences, praising the originality of the film and its techniques while making many question the nature of truth.[28] The film won both the Italian Critics Award and the Golden Lion award—introducing Western audiences, including Western directors, more noticeably to both Kurosawa's films and techniques, such as shooting directly into the sun and using mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the actor's faces.

The film was released in the United States on December 26, 1951, by RKO Radio Pictures in both subtitled and dubbed versions, and it won an Academy Honorary Award in 1952 for being "the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951" (the current Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film wasn't introduced until 1956). The following year, when it was eligible for consideration in other Academy Award categories, it was nominated for Best Art Direction for a Black-and-White Film.

Upon release in North America, Ed Sullivan gave the film a positive review in Hollywood Citizen-News, calling it "an exciting evening, because the direction, the photography and the performances will jar open your eyes." He praised Akutagawa's original plot, Kurosawa's impactful direction and screenplay, Mifune's "magnificent" villainous performance, and Miyagawa's "spellbinding" cinematography that achieves "visual dimensions that I've never seen in Hollywood photography" such as being "shot through a relentless rainstorm that heightens the mood of the somber drama."[29] In the early 1960s, film historians credited Rashomon as the start of the international New Wave cinema movement, which gained popularity during the late 1950s to early 1960s.[28]

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 98% of 52 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; with an average rating of 9.3/10. The site's consensus reads: "One of legendary director Akira Kurosawa's most acclaimed films, Rashomon features an innovative narrative structure, brilliant acting, and a thoughtful exploration of reality versus perception."[30] In a 1998 issue of Time Out New York, Andrew Johnston wrote:

Rashomon is probably familiar even to those who haven't seen it, since in movie jargon, the film's title has become synonymous with its chief narrative conceit: a story told multiple times from various points of view. There's much more than that to the film, of course. For example, the way Kurosawa uses his camera...takes this fascinating meditation on human nature closer to the style of silent film than almost anything made after the introduction of sound.[31]

Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four and included it in his Great Movies list.[32]

Rashomon spawned numerous remakes and adaptations across film, television and theatre.[33][34] Examples include:

• Rashomon as a play, various versions of which have been performed since the 1950s, including on Broadway in 1959.[35][36]
• Valerie, a 1957 American western Inspired by Kurosawa's film.
• The Outrage, a 1964 American western directed by Martin Ritt. Screenplay adapted from Kurosawa's screenplay by Michael Kanin, who also co-wrote the 1959 Broadway version.[35][37]
• On The Dick Van Dyke Show, in 1962, season 2, episode 9, "The Night the Roof Fell In". Rob and Laura's perspectives of their day is countered by a goldfish.[38]
• Yavanika, a 1982 Indian Malayalam-language film loosely based on the film. The film stars Bharat Gopy and Mammootty.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, where a 1990 episode called “A Matter of Perspective” was produced and aired with a similar plot line to Rashomon, this time told from the view of Commander Riker, the assistant of a murdered respected scientist, and the scientist’s widow.[39][34]
• Courage Under Fire, a 1996 war film, in which events surrounding the rescue of a downed blackhawk helicopter in the First Gulf War are recounted in flashbacks by three different crew members.[33]
• On Frasier, in 1997, season 5, episode 9, "Perspectives on Christmas". The family each recall their day from different perspectives.[34]
• Farscape’s second season’s 17th episode, “The Ugly Truth”, which aired in 2000, follows this format, challenging the crew of Moya as liars, as the interrogators are a species with eidetic memory who can’t comprehend subjective viewpoints.[34]
• On CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, in the 2006, Season 6, Episode 21 "Rashomama". Nick's car containing all the evidence for a murder is stolen and the team attempts to continue the investigation based on their conflicting memories of the crime scene.[40]
• Vantage Point, a 2008 film with multiple viewpoints focusing on an assassination attempt on the President of the United States
• The Rashomon Job, an episode of the series Leverage (2008–2012) telling the story of a heist from five points of view (S03E11)
• At the Gate of the Ghost, a 2011 Thai film by M.L. Pundhevanop Devakula, adapting Kurosawa's screenplay to ancient Ayutthaya.[41]
• Police Story 2013, a 2013 film partially inspired by some plot elements
• Ulidavaru Kandanthe, a 2014 Kannada film directed Rakshit Shetty, where a journalist narrates the story of a murder in 7 different viewpoints by giving special reference to local Tulu people and their culture.
• Talvar, a 2015 Hindi film narrates the story of a double murder through multiple contradictory viewpoints.
• The Handmaiden, a 2016 Korean erotic psychological thriller told in 3 parts through multiple views.[33][42]
• The Bottomless Bag, a 2017 Russian film by Rustam Khamdamov, also based on Akutagawa's In a Grove.
• Tombstone Rashomon, a 2017 film that tells the story of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the style of Rashomon.
• The Last Duel, Ridley Scott's 2021 epic historical drama of a rape and duel told through multiple points of view.[43][44]

The film appeared on many critics' top lists of the best films.

• 5th – Top ten list in 1950, Kinema Junpo
• 10th – Directors' Top Ten Poll in 1992, Sight & Sound[46]
• 10th - 100 Greatest Films list in 2000 The Village Voice[47]
• 76th - "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics in 2002.[48][49]
• 9th – Directors' Top Ten Poll in 2002, Sight & Sound[50]
• 13th - Critics' poll in 2002, Sight & Sound[51][52]
• 290th – The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time in 2008, Empire[53]
• 50 Klassiker, Film by Nicolaus Schröder in 2002[54]
• 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider in 2003[55]
• 7th – Kinema Junpo's The Greatest Japanese Films of All Time in 2009.[56]
• 22nd – Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.[57]
• 26th - Critics top ten poll, 100 Greatest Films of All Time, Sight & Sound magazine (2012)
• 18th - Director's top ten poll, 100 Greatest Films of All Time, Sight & Sound magazine (2012)
• Woody Allen included it among his top ten films.[58]
• 4th - BBC's list of "100 greatest foreign language films" in 2018.[59]

• Conrad, David A. (2022) Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co.
• Davidson, James F. (1987) "Memory of Defeat in Japan: A Reappraisal of Rashomon" in Richie, Donald (ed.). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 159–166.
• Erens, Patricia (1979) Akira Kurosawa: a guide to references and resources. Boston: G.K.Hall.
• Galbraith IV, Stuart (1994). Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. McFarland. ISBN 0-89950-853-7.
• Heider, Karl G. (March 1988). "The Rashomon Effect: When Ethnographers Disagree". American Anthropologist. 90 (1): 73–81. doi:10.1525/aa.1988.90.1.02a00050.
• Kauffman, Stanley (1987) "The Impact of Rashomon" in Richie, Donald (ed.) Rashomon. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 173–177.
• McDonald, Keiko I. (1987) "The Dialectic of Light and Darkness in Kurosawa's Rashomon" in Richie, Donald (ed.) Rashomon. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 183–192.
• Naas, Michael B. (1997) "Rashomon and the Sharing of Voices Between East and West." in Sheppard, Darren, et al., (eds.) On Jean-Luc Nancy: The Sense of Philosophy. New York: Routledge, pp. 63–90.
• Richie, Donald (1987) "Rashomon" in Richie, Donald (ed.) Rashomon. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 1–21.
• Richie, Donald (1984) The Films of Akira Kurosawa. (2nd ed.) Berkeley, California: University of California Press
• Sato, Tadao (1987) "Rashomon" in Richie, Donald (ed.) Rashomon New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 167–172.
• Tyler, Parker. "Rashomon as Modern Art" (1987) in Richie, Donald (ed.) Rashomon. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, pp. 149–158.