Rashomon

Rashomon ( 羅⽣⾨ Rashōmon) is a 1950

Japanese period psychological thriller film
directed by Akira Kurosawa, working in
close collaboration with cinematographer
Kazuo Miyagawa.[2] It stars Toshiro
Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori, and
Takashi Shimura. While the film borrows
the title from Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's
short story "Rashōmon", it is actually
based on Akutagawa's short story of 1922
"In a Grove", which provides the characters
and plot.
 Rashomon

Original Japanese poster from 1962 re-release

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Produced by Minoru Jingo

Screenplay by Akira Kurosawa
Shinobu Hashimoto

Based on "In a Grove"

by Ryūnosuke
Akutagawa

Starring Toshiro Mifune

Machiko Kyō
Masayuki Mori
Takashi Shimura
Minoru Chiaki

Music by Fumio Hayasaka

Cinematography Kazuo Miyagawa

Edited by Akira Kurosawa

Production Daiei Film

company
Distributed by Daiei Film
Release date August 25, 1950

Running time 88 minutes

Country Japan

Language Japanese

Budget $250,000

Box office $96,568 (US)[1]

The film is known for a plot device that

involves various characters providing
subjective, alternative, self-serving and
contradictory versions of the same
incident. Rashomon marked the entrance
of Japanese film onto the world stage;[3][4]
it won several awards, including the
Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in
1951, and an Academy Honorary Award at
the 24th Academy Awards in 1952, and is
considered one of the greatest films ever
made. The Rashomon effect is named
after the film.

Plot
The film opens on a woodcutter ( ⽊樵り;
Kikori, played by Takashi Shimura) and a
旅法師; Tabi Hōshi, Minoru Chiaki)
priest (
sitting beneath the Rashōmon city gate to
stay dry in a downpour. A commoner
(Kichijiro Ueda) joins them and they tell
him that they have witnessed a disturbing
story, which they then begin recounting to
him. The woodcutter claims he found the
body of a murdered samurai three days
earlier while looking for wood in the forest;
upon discovering the body, he says, he fled
in a panic to notify the authorities. The
priest says that he saw the samurai with
his wife traveling the same day the murder
happened. Both men are then summoned
to testify in court, where they meet the
captured bandit Tajōmaru ( 多襄丸), who
claims to have set the samurai free after
encountering him in the forest.

The bandit's story

Tajōmaru (Toshiro Mifune), a notorious
outlaw, claims that he tricked the samurai
to step off the mountain trail with him and
look at a cache of ancient swords he
discovered. In the grove he tied the
samurai to a tree, then brought the
samurai's wife there. She initially tried to
defend herself with a dagger, but was
eventually "seduced" by the bandit. 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
having two men know her dishonor.
Tajōmaru honorably set the samurai free
and dueled with him. In Tajōmaru's
recollection they fought skillfully and
fiercely, but in the end Tajōmaru was the
victor and the woman ran away. At the end
of the story to the court, 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.

The wife's story

The samurai's wife (Machiko Kyō) tells a

different story to the court. She says that
Tajōmaru left after raping her. 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 with a look of loathing. His
expression disturbed her so much that she
fainted with dagger in hand. She awoke to
find her husband dead with the dagger in
his chest. She attempted to kill herself, but
failed in all her efforts.

The samurai's story

The court then hears the story of the

deceased samurai (Masayuki Mori), told
through a medium ( 巫⼥; miko, Noriko
Honma). The samurai claims that
Tajōmaru, after raping his wife, asked her
to travel with him. She accepted and asked
Tajōmaru to kill her husband so that she
would not feel the guilt of belonging to two
men. Tajōmaru, shocked by this request,
grabbed her, and gave the samurai a
choice of letting the woman go or killing
her. "For these words alone," the dead
samurai recounted, "I was ready to pardon
his crime." The woman fled, and Tajōmaru,
after attempting to recapture her, gave up
and set the samurai free. The samurai
then killed himself with his wife's dagger.
Later, someone removed the dagger from
his chest.

The woodcutter's story

Back at Rashōmon gate (after the trial),
the woodcutter explains to the commoner
that all three stories were falsehoods. The
woodcutter had actually witnessed the
rape and murder, but declined the
opportunity to testify at the trial because
he didn't want to get involved. According
to the woodcutter's new story, Tajōmaru
begged the samurai's wife to marry him,
but the woman instead freed her husband.
The husband was initially unwilling to fight
Tajōmaru, saying he would not risk his life
for a spoiled woman, but the woman then
criticized both him and Tajōmaru, saying
they were not real men and that a real man
would fight for a woman's love. She
spurred the men to fight one another, but
then hid her face in fear once they raised
swords; the men, too, were visibly fearful
as they began fighting. They began a duel
that was much more pitiful than
Tajōmaru's account had made it sound,
and Tajōmaru ultimately won through a
stroke of luck. After some hesitation he
killed the samurai, who begged for his life
on the ground, and the woman fled in
horror. Tajōmaru could not catch her, but
took the samurai's sword and left the
scene limping.

Climax
At the gate, 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 in a basket, and the
commoner takes a kimono and an amulet
that have been left for the baby. The
woodcutter reproaches the commoner for
stealing from the abandoned baby, but the
commoner chastises him. Having deduced
that the reason the woodcutter did not
speak up at the trial was because he was
the one who stole the dagger from the
scene of the murder, the commoner
mocks him as "a bandit calling another a
bandit." The commoner leaves Rashōmon,
claiming that all men are motivated only by
self-interest.

These deceptions and lies shake the

priest's faith in humanity. He is brought
back to his senses when the woodcutter
reaches for the baby in the priest's arms.
The priest is suspicious at first, but the
woodcutter explains that he intends to
take care of the baby along with his own
children, of whom he already has six. 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 and
the clouds have opened revealing the sun
in contrast to the beginning where it was
overcast.

Cast
Takashi Shimura as Kikori, the wood
cutter
Minoru Chiaki as Tabi Hōshi, the priest
Kichijiro Ueda as the listener, a common
person
Toshiro Mifune as Tajōmaru, the bandit
Machiko Kyō as the Samurai’s wife
 Masayuki Mori as the Samurai, the
husband
Noriko Honma as Miko, the medium
Daisuke Katō as Houben, the policeman

Production
The name of the film refers to the
enormous, former city gate "between
modern day Kyoto and Nara", on Suzaka
Avenue's end to the South.[5] The term
Rashomon effect refers to real-world
situations in which multiple eye-witness
testimonies of an event contain conflicting
information.

Development
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."[6]
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 got from Daiei.

Casting

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".[7]

Filming

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.[8]
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.[9]

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.[10]

Lighting

Robert Altman compliments Kurosawa's

use of "dappled" light throughout the film,
which gives the characters and settings
further ambiguity.[11] 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.

Editing

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".

Music

The film was scored by Fumio Hayasaka,

who is among the most respected of
Japanese composers.[12] At the director's
request, he included an adaptation of
"Boléro" by Maurice Ravel, especially
during the woman's story.[13]

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]

Allegorical and symbolic

content
The film depicts the rape of a woman and
the murder of her samurai husband
through the widely differing accounts of
four witnesses, including the bandit/rapist,
the wife, the dead man (speaking through
a medium), and lastly the woodcutter, the
one witness who seems the most
objective and least biased. The stories are
mutually contradictory and even the final
version can be seen as motivated by
factors of ego and face. The actors kept
approaching Kurosawa wanting to know
the truth, and he claimed the point of the
film was to be an exploration of multiple
realities rather than an exposition of a
particular truth. Later film and TV uses of
the "Rashomon effect" focus on revealing
"the truth" in a now conventional technique
that presents the final version of a story as
the truth, an approach that only matches
Kurosawa's film on the surface.
Due to its emphasis on the subjectivity of
truth and the uncertainty of factual
accuracy, Rashomon has been read by
some as an allegory of the defeat of Japan
at the end of World War II. James F.
Davidson's article "Memory of Defeat in
Japan: A Reappraisal of Rashomon" in the
December 1954 issue of the Antioch
Review is an early analysis of the World
War II defeat elements.[15] Another
allegorical interpretation of the film is
mentioned briefly in a 1995 article "Japan:
An Ambivalent Nation, an Ambivalent
Cinema" by David M. Desser.[16] Here, the
film is seen as an allegory of the atomic
bomb and Japanese defeat. It also briefly
mentions James Goodwin's view on the
influence of post-war events on the film.
However, "In a Grove" (the short story by
Akutagawa that the film is based on) was
published already in 1922, so any postwar
allegory would have been the result of
Kurosawa's editing rather than the story
about the conflicting accounts.

Symbolism runs rampant throughout the

film and much has been written on the
subject. Bucking tradition, Miyagawa
directly filmed the sun through the leaves
of the trees, as if to show the light of truth
becoming obscured.
Release
Rashomon was released in Japan on
August 24, 1950.[17] It was released
theatrically in the United States by RKO
Radio Pictures with English subtitles on
December 26, 1951.[17]

Reception
Japanese critical responses

Although it won two Japanese awards and

performed well at the domestic box
office,[18] 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.[19]

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".[20] He also quotes
Kurosawa criticizing the way the
"Japanese think too little of our own
[Japanese] things".
Japanese poster for Rashomon

International responses

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 and 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. 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."[21] In Time Out
New York, Andrew Johnston (critic)
observed: "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."[22]

Preservation
The Academy Film Archive preserved
Rashomon in 2008.[23]

Awards and honors

Blue Ribbon Awards (1951) – Best
Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa and
 Shinobu Hashimoto
Mainichi Film Concours (1951) – Best
Actress: Machiko Kyō
Venice Film Festival (1951) – Golden
Lion: Akira Kurosawa
National Board of Review USA (1952) –
Best Director: Akira Kurosawa and Best
Foreign Film: Japan
24th Academy Awards, USA (1952) –
Honorary Award for "most outstanding
foreign language film"

Top lists

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
9th – Directors' Top Ten Poll in 2002,
Sight & Sound
290th – The 500 Greatest Movies of All
Time in 2008, Empire[24]
50 Klassiker, Film by Nicolaus Schröder
in 2002[25]
1001 Movies You Must See Before You
Die by Steven Jay Schneider in 2003[26]
22nd – Empire magazine's "The 100
Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.[27]
Woody Allen included it among his top
10 films.[28]
See also
"The Moonlit Road", a short story that
may have partly served as inspiration for
Rashomon[29][a]
The Outrage, a 1964 remake starring
Paul Newman
Ulidavaru Kandanthe, a 2014 Kannada-
language film partially inspired by some
plot elements
Tombstone Rashomon, a 2017 film that
tells the story of the Gunfight at the O.K.
Corral in the style of Rashomon
Kishōtenketsu
Nonlinear narrative
 Unreliable narrator

Notes
a. The other one being The Woman in
Question (1950).[30]

References
1. https://www.the-
numbers.com/movie/Rashomon#tab=sum
mary
2. "Rashomon" . The Criterion Collection.
Retrieved 21 November 2018.
3. Wheeler Winston Dixon, Gwendolyn
Audrey Foster: A Short History of Film.
Rutgers University Press, 2008,
ISBN 9780813544755, p. 203
4. Catherine Russell: Classical Japanese
Cinema Revisited. Bloomsbury Publishing,
2011, ISBN 9781441107770, chapter 4 The
Cinema of Akira Kurosawa
5. Richie, Rashomon, p 113.
6. Donald Richie, The Films of Akira
Kurosawa.
7. Qtd. in Richie, Films.
8. The World of Kazuo Miyagawa (original
title: The Camera Also Acts: Movie
Cameraman Miyagawa Kazuo) director
unknown. NHK, year unknown.
Television/Criterion blu-ray
9. Richie, Films.
10. Akira Kurosawa. "Akira Kurosawa on
Rashomon" . Retrieved 21 December 2012.
"when the camera was aimed upward at the
cloudy sky over the gate, the sprinkle of the
rain couldn’t be seen against it, so we made
rainfall with black ink in it."
11. Altman, Robert. One typical example
from the movie which shows the ambiguity
of the characters is when the bandit and the
wife talk to each other in the woods, the
light falls on the person who is not talking
and shows the amused expressions, this
represents the ambiguity present. "Altman
Introduction to Rashomon", Criterion
Collection DVD, Rashomon.
12. "Hayasaka, Fumio – Dictionary
definition of Hayasaka, Fumio |
Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary" .
Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2011-10-21.
13. "Akira Kurosawa on Rashomon — From
the Current — The Criterion Collection" .
Criterion.com. 2002-02-25. Retrieved
2011-10-21.
14. Teruyo Nogami, Waiting on the Weather:
Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa, Stone
Bridge Press, Inc., 1 September 2006, p. 90,
ISBN 1933330090.
15. The article has since appeared in some
subsequent Rashomon anthologies,
including Focus on Rashomon [1] in 1972
and Rashomon (Rutgers Film in Print) [2] in
1987. Davidson's article is referred to in
other sources, in support of various ideas.
These sources include: The Fifty-Year War:
Rashomon, After Life, and Japanese Film
Narratives of Remembering a 2003 article
by Mike Sugimoto in Japan Studies Review
Volume 7 [3] , Japanese Cinema:
Kurosawa's Ronin by G. Sham "Archived
copy" . Archived from the original on 2006-
01-15. Retrieved 2005-11-16., Critical
Reception of Rashomon in the West by Greg
M. Smith, Asian Cinema 13.2 (Fall/Winter
2002) 115-28 [4] , Rashomon vs. Optimistic
Rationalism Concerning the Existence of
"True Facts" [5] , Persistent Ambiguity and
Moral Responsibility in Rashomon by
Robert van Es [6] and Judgment by Film:
Socio-Legal Functions of Rashomon by Orit
Kamir [7] Archived 2015-09-15 at the
Wayback Machine.
16. "Hiroshima: A Retrospective" .
illinois.edu. Archived from the original on
2011-10-22.
17. Galbraith IV 1994, p. 309.
18. Richie, Donald (2001). A Hundred Years
of Japanese Film. A Concise History. Tokyo:
Kodansha International. p. 139.
19. Tatara, Paul (1997-12-25). "Rashomon" .
Tcm.com. Retrieved 2011-10-21.
20. (Richie, 80)
21. "Rashomon" . Rotten Tomatoes.
Flixster. Retrieved January 6, 2019.
22. Johnston, Andrew (February 26, 1998).
"Rashomon". Time Out New York.
23. "Preserved Projects" . Academy Film
Archive.
24. "Empire Features" . Empireonline.com.
2006-12-05. Retrieved 2011-10-21.
25. Schröder, Nicolaus. (2002). 50 Klassiker,
Film. Gerstenberg. ISBN 978-3-8067-2509-4.
26. "1001 Series" . 1001beforeyoudie.com.
2002-07-22. Archived from the original on
2014-01-10. Retrieved 2011-10-21.
27. "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema –
22. Rashomon" . Empire.
28. "Read Sight & Sound Top 10 Lists from
Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, Martin
Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, Woody Allen
and More" . Collider.
29. "How Kurosawa inspired Tamil films" .
The Times of India. Retrieved 13 March
2016.
30. "Andha Naal 1954" . The Hindu.
Retrieved 13 March 2016.

Bibliography
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 v.90,
pp. 73–81.
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.
External links
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Rashomon (film)

Rashomon on IMDb
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Rashomon at the TCM Movie Database
Rashomon at Rotten Tomatoes
Rashomon at Box Office Mojo
The Rashomon Effect an essay by
Stephen Prince at the Criterion
Collection
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