Rashomon is one of the greatest films in the history of Japanese cinema. It was released in 1950 and is credited with bringing attention in the West to Asian motion pictures. Rashomon was the first Asian motion picture to receive an Academy Award as the best foreign picture of the year. It brought fame to director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune.
Rashomon takes place in Japan during the A.D. 1100’s. At the beginning of the movie, three men are huddled during a rainstorm under the ruined Rashomon gate that leads to the destroyed city of Kyoto. One of the men, a woodcutter, tells how he went into the forest one day to collect firewood. He found the body of a samurai (professional warrior) and reported the discovery to the police. The police found the wife of the samurai and the bandit who killed him.
The bandit and the wife give conflicting accounts of how and why the samurai was killed. Then the ghost of the samurai, speaking through a medium, provides a third version of the events. Finally, the woodcutter gives his version. Each of the four narrators tells a story that places him or her in the most positive light. At the end of the film, the truth of what really happened remains unknown. Rashomon seems to imply that reality is in the eye of the beholder and objective truth does not exist.
Toshiro Mifune played the role of the bandit. Mifune also starred in many later Kurosawa films that made him one of the most acclaimed motion-picture actors in the world. The noted Japanese actress Machiko Kyo played the samurai’s wife.
See also Kurosawa, Akira .
