Hae Nee Lee

Professor Naomi Fukumori

Japanese 251
February 3, 2011
Extra Credit Assignment

Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon (1950)

The author, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, has combined the two stories of ‘How a thief

climbed to the upper story of Rasho Gate and Saw a Corpse’ and ‘How a man who was

accompanying his wife to Tanba Province got trussed up at Oeyama’ to create a story of

‘Rashomon’. At the beginning of ‘How a thief climbed to the upper story of Rasho Gate and

Saw a Corpse’, a man who had been walking from the direction of Settsu Province hid

himself from sun beneath Rasho gate. The Rasho gate is the same gate that appears in the

story of ‘Rashomon.’ However, Akutagawa Ryunosuke has edited out the rest of ‘How a thief

climbed to the upper story of Rasho Gate and Saw a Corpse’ in ‘Rashomon.’ Most part of the

story of ‘Rashomon’ is comprised of the story of ‘How a man who was accompanying his

wife to Tanba Province got trussed up at Oeyama’ The parts that Akutagawa Ryunosuke has

added in his story of ‘Rashomon’ is where the husband encounters other men with sword and

bow and starts to have conversation. This conversation eventually caused the rape of his wife

done by the man the husband had just been talking to.

Within these few changes, Akutagawa Ryunosuke tried to emphasize the fact that he

has created a complete new story from two different stories; ‘How a thief climbed to the

upper story of Rasho Gate and Saw a Corpse’ and How a man who was accompanying his

wife to Tanba Province got trussed up at Oeyama.’ Even though the plots of the two stories

are different, Akutagawa Ryunosuke has done a good job of combining the two plots as well

as his another story ‘In a Grove.’ In fact, the story of ‘Rashomon’ is somewhat similar to the

story of ‘In a Grove.’ Therefore, Akutagawa Ryunosuke has perhaps tried to emphasize more
of the story of ‘In a Grove’ with little additions from the two other stories.

Kurosawa Akira, the director of the film version of ‘Rashomon’, has combined the

story of ‘In a Grove’ anmd ‘How a man who was accompanying his wife to Tanba Province

got trussed up at oeyama’ in his film. The main plot of the story is the rape of a woman, the

death of her samurai husband, and various conflicts around the crime. In the story of ‘How a

man who was accompanying his wife to Tanba Province got trussed up at oeyama’, the

woman’s husband does not die at the end of the story. However, in Kurosawa Akira’s film,

the husband is discovered dead. This is the first part that Kurosawa Akira has changed from

the novel.

In the film, there are four witnesses who claim to have seen the crime. They are the

thief who raped the woman, the wife, samurai himself, and a wood cutter. The wood cutter is

only present in the film. He does not appear in any of the novels that are related to the film.

Therefore, the wood cutter is a character that Kurosawa Akira has decided to add in his film.

Overall, the primary theme of Kurosawa’s film ‘Rashomon’ is the truth of human

morality. In the film, the morality of all four witnesses has been violated. Each person claims

different stories that are more beneficent to themselves not to the actual fact of the crime. It is

amazing to see how these people could keep telling four completely different stories to

describe a single crime scene. Kurosawa Akira has also tried to put a question of how human

beings are capable of doing so in his film. He has also emphasized that the selfishness of

human beings could cause any lies if that would actually benefit themselves. In my opinion,

Kurosawa Akira could have encountered a problem like it in his life and it may have been a

huge impact of his thoughts about human beings. He perhaps decided to make this film from

this experience.

The truth of the crime in ‘Rashomon’ has never been revealed. It has an open ending

that makes the audiences to think further into the stories. The man who joins the monk and
the woodcutter under the Rashomon makes this statement: We all want to forget something,

so we create stories. This statement almost wraps up the whole story of the ‘Rashomon’ film.

The four witnesses never tell a single story that explains the truth of the crime. It is strange to

see that all of them tell different stories about the same crime. Here is when the statement

sounds similar to the story. All of the witnesses, who have actually seen the crime scene, do

not want to think about the truth. Therefore, they create new stories. We do not know what

has caused them to want to forget about the truth. However, we definitely know that they are

creating new stories to hide the truth. In my opinion, the behind story of the film is that the

thief, wood cutter, and the husband have planned to commit the crime as a team. Therefore, to

escape from being charged for the crime, all of them start to tell lies after lies. They do so

because they want to forget what they have done.