Rashomon Essay

The book is laid out in sequence. It opened up with the testimony of the woodcutter who was being interviewed by a high police commissioner. The woodcutter proceeded to tell the commissioner that he had just stumbled on a crime scene – a man wearing a bluish silk kimono with his face on the ground with fatal wound on his chest. This set up the tempo for the book. After each interview, the story jumps into another character’s testimony. It tells the story through the perspectives of the characters where they are all witness of a crime where a samurai had been murdered. There were a few witnesses to the crime: woodcutter, traveling Buddhist priest, policeman, bandit, old woman, his wife, and the man himself through a medium. Each one of the testimonies given by the witnesses differs from one another. The only thing they all had in common was that a samurai was killed. The book and the movie sets it up where we the reader are the jury of the crime. They all started telling what they have seen, what had happen, what were they doing, and how did they stumbled upon the murder scene. It’s almost like an exercise of finding out the truth based on the testimony given by each witness. Where we (readers and viewers) come to a consensus of determining who is the one telling the truth among them. Which is hard because they were all subjective interpretations of all witnesses. There isn’t anything that would point out who the real culprit is. After doing some research of the time frame when this book was written, I found out that the scenes that the author was trying to portray was pretty much identical to the time period that the book was trying to portray. It was written during the 20th century, a time where social disintegration and population distress prevalent. Most of the population practiced Buddhism, Shinto, and Taoism, which reflected in the movie when the husband was giving his testimony through a medium. The medium was his wife, which also seems like one of the short story that we read, Sotoba Komachi. Which have the same situation where the woman have done something terrible to a man therefore she is punished by having her body possessed by the man that she had wronged. During this time period, Buddhism was on the rise along with Shinto. It was apparent on the film when the opening scene showed Rashomon (Rajomon gate), which was the main gate for Kyoto. The gate looked devastated and torn down because during that time there was plenty of natural disasters and buildings being set on fire and also gangs and vigilantes were prevalent during this time that tried to rebel against the corrupt governors. The book and the movie showed the correlation with the time period by showing us how bad the living conditions are, or any of the characters situations are for that matter. In particular was the former samurai servant. Where he had taken refuge from the rain under the bridge but have no idea what to do after the rain stops because he was just discharged by his master. He was troubled about what the future holds for him. He didn’t have a job and also depressed because of it. Since he thought his situation was desperate, he started to debate whether he should look for a job and spend his life working as an honest man or become a thief. Regardless, the outcome wasn’t in his favor. After some time spending in the gate, the samurai servant cross path with a woman. Their situation was further magnified when the author described the environment of the place that they were taking refuge in – it was so bad that they didn’t care that the place was littered with copses. So many corpses that he had to watch where he step so that he wouldn’t trip over them and he couldn’t count how many there were around him. Also the stench of the corpses didn’t bother them. The servant started to investigate the noise that he heard from upstairs. There he encountered an old woman who he thought was a wretched hag. The old woman was there because she was plucking hairs from the corpses for her to use as a wig. This was the time where the samurai servant decided that he would go down the path of living as a thief by robbing her of her kimono. After reading and watching the movie, I think the movie stayed true to the book. The film uses flashbacks during the testimonies of the witnesses, which I thought was great because it cleared things up a little bit more. The scenes put you in the situation that they were in and try to relay the experience to you from their viewpoint. It showed the story being influenced by the characters emotions and the accuracy changes from person to person which is probably the intended objective of the director. The sequence of the witnesses was different in the movie than the book. In the movie, they used one of the guys in the Rashomon taking refuge as a witness where in the book – to me, it seems like the movie used none of the witness that was in Rashomon. I could be mistaken because in the movie, the opening scene was under the Rashomon and three guys were talking about what happened. They seemed in disarray at first and then it jumped to a scene where one of the guys was walking in the woods and discovered the carcass, from there the scene transitioned to the characters taking turns giving their testimony. In the book, there were two people in Rashomon taking refuge from the rain; it was a samurai servant and an old woman. Although the movie did a great job on using flashbacks to paint a clearer picture on what happened. There was no backstory on the characters. They were all portrayed as country-dwellers and vagabond staying in Rashomon. The only one that was clear to me was the wife, samurai, and the bandit. In the movie, they showed the woman was kissed and the scene cut out after that, allowing the audience to guess what happened. I would imagine that the scene was shocking since it was they very first kiss that was captured on film. Also, during the kiss, I thought that the woman was fighting it at first but then seemed to relax and go with it as the camera faded. For those who haven’t read the book, it might seem like that’s the only thing they did but he did much more things to her than just kiss – the woman was raped. It’s hard to guess that if you haven’t read the book. The only thing that I can think of that can possibly give away that the woman was raped was the reaction of the husband. His emotion changed from struggling to escape and angrily, to staring off in the distance and at peace with himself. This reaction was probably based on the Japanese culture where the woman is now given a choice between her rapist and her husband. I like how the author showcased the culture during that period, the reaction of the husband towards the wife whenever she succumbs to the bandit and how it portrayed the samurai. To the samurai, she had committed an act against him that did not warrant him to show any emotions. He understood that it was a loss cost fighting for her whenever she made the decision to let the bandit do whatever he wants with her. After reading and watching Rashomon, it’s easier to understand how Japan has been struggling with their identity. I lived in Japan for a couple years, which gave me a brief idea how the Japanese culture is. Their culture is very hospitable and very welcoming. During my stay there, not once did I feel threatened or feel like I was in some kind of danger. I never knew that Japan was just literally coming out of the medieval period transitioning to the industrial period. The only way I can explain that is, a baby that just learned how to turn on its belly then all of a sudden started trying to sprint. Which would also explain how hard they are trying to hold on to their tradition but slowly losing it, because the young generations are trying to embrace the western culture. The book and the movie did a fantastic job in showing the living condition during the time period. It’s hard to believe that just a couple of decades from that period, Japan was still struggling and fighting to have a democracy. In the span of a couple decades – Japan would have built an army that rivals the military power of the western world. Not only build, but also, declare a war with the western powers.