The Rashomon Effect: Kurosawa’s Impact on Truth and Justice

As today marks the 73rd anniversary of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), I thought I would revisit a piece I had written a while back which discusses the film’s legacy in relation to the law and our understanding of what’s real altogether. In essence a depiction of a conversation which took place under a weathered gate in the midst of a fearsome rainstorm, Rashomon was a watershed in cinematic history as it disrupted what we commonly think of truth to be. Instead of witnessing a singular and seemingly authoritative account of what had happened, the audience was faced with a multiplicity of contradictory stories and no solution to the mystery on hand even as the story concludes. As a testimony to Kurosawa’s virtuosic genius and the film’s cultural significance, such occurrences, whether in art, literature or law, had been termed the ‘Rashomon Effect’ by many. Accordingly, it is interesting to consider how Rashomon challenges how truth is understood whereby a further commentary on the shortcomings of the legal process, where truth itself is arbitrated, can also be extrapolated. To understand how such philosophically resonant effects had been achieved, Kurosawa’s choice of narrative technique and the mise-en-scène employed shall be examined.

Kurosawa employs a highly nuanced narrative technique involving the crossing of perspectives through the use of camera and editing techniques and also an overarching multifaceted framing device to emphasize how truth can often be distorted or obscured. Though the scene follows Tajomaru’s narration, it was interspersed with point of view shots taking the perspective of the Wife where he forcibly holds her down such that she is facing the sky. By editing in these extreme high-angle shots from her point of view, Kurosawa disrupts Tajomaru’s account of the story and visually reminds the audience to question the veracity of his claims. By extension, this also emphasizes how it is only possible to establish the Wife’s consent through her own statement and thereby empowering her vis-à-vis Tajomaru given that the need to hear her account is highlighted. In itself, these high angle shots also invite further questioning. Where the camera moves, it pans and rotates in a dizzying manner. This suggests trauma, which directly contradicts Tajomaru’s claim of how he had won her over, and also disorientation, which echoes the difficulty in finding the truth in Tajomaru’s claims. Where the camera remains still, it is directed at the sun to create a dazzling but also blinding effect, emphasizing how it is impossible to see the truth given that Tajomaru’s telling of the story had kept us blind as to certain salient facts, particularly as the sharpness of the image dissolves into a blur.

The intricacy in Kurosawa’s narrative technique is further seen through the change of setting after the suggested rape of the Wife which reveals that Tajomaru was actually sharing his story in court and that what had been depicted earlier, was in fact a story-within-a-story. Here, it is important to note that Tajomaru’s testimony is also situated within a retelling by the Priest, adding yet another level of distance between the audience and the truth which contributed to the believability, or lack thereof, of his story. This distance further challenges the audiences’ understanding of Tajomaru’s account as the Priest may have possibly exercised his own curatorial discretion in his retelling of the story too. When juxtaposed with the competing narratives within the film as a whole and how they openly contradict each other, the framing device forces the audience to evaluate the matter themselves and reconsider the truth in Tajomaru’s statements, the Priest’s retelling and by extension, Kurosawa’s film itself. This deepens the mystery behind the murder due to the ambiguity created while bringing into question the operations of the law and its capacity to decide and render justice as an institution that relies on witness testimonies and also philosophically, whether it is possible to have a singular notion of truth at all.

The complexity involved in the uncovering of the truth is further explored in the mise-en-scène, particularly through the high contrast visuals which is further perpetuated by the use of lighting. Of note is how in contrast to the men, the Wife is consistently remarkably well-lit such that she even appears to be bathed in a halo. This is further exacerbated by her costume whereby she is dressed completely in white. These factors combine and create an image that accentuates her purity, a visage through which Kurosawa (and Tajomaru too if we take into account how it is Tajomaru who is telling the story in that moment) urges the audience to believe in her and the claims attributed to her, which is that she cannot be “doubly disgraced before two men” and that either the Samurai or Tajomaru must die. However, the emphasis on her words creates confusion since whether we believe her or not in itself has no bearing on Tajomaru’s culpability even if it may romanticize his deeds by giving him a veneer of honour as he would have committed murder just to preserve her pride after having won over her love. The absurdity of the situation is further emphasized contextually by how Tajomaru’s assertion of what she had said follows his declaration that he “had her…without killing the husband”. In conjunction with his claim that he “hadn’t intended to kill him”, he would have remained mostly innocent in the absence of any further evidence if not for his confession. The overall effect whereby the audience is led towards believing a statement that ennobles Tajomaru even though it does not exonerate him brings into question how perceptions of what a crime is and isn’t may differ. Similarly, the validity of his testimony can also be read as a commentary on how self-serving confessions can be whereby perceptions of reality can be freely manipulated to suit one’s agenda.

Truth and its role within the legal process may be further explored through the film’s mise-en-scène when we consider how the characters interact with shadows. Throughout the scenes in the forest, intricate shadows were cast by the tree’s foliage onto the characters. By obscuring what is visible on screen, Kurosawa hints at how truth is being obscured. Evincing this once again is how despite being characteristically well-lit, the Wife’s face is covered in the shots alluding to her being raped. Here, the close ups of the Wife who is masked by the shadows work in tandem with the extreme high-angle shots to cast doubt on Tajomaru’s story through the sense of disorientation that Kurosawa creates. Accordingly, the characters’ movement through the whites, blacks and greys can be said to illustrate the delicate balance between truth, falsehoods and the shades of greys that lies in-between. Similarly, the close up shot of the Samurai where he is shrouded in shadow with only his left eye visible, demonstrates how truth can be obscured deliberately by the parties involved as even though he moves his head such that his right eye moves into the light, his eyes were in fact shut. The emphasis on the shutting of his eyes thus signifies his denial of Tajomaru’s statement, a fact that the audience does in fact experience as he does presents his version of the events later, albeit through a medium. Similarly, the scene whereby Tajomaru taunts the Samurai with his sword after having freed him so as to fight for the Wife’s honour exemplifies this too as he consistently moves from lightness to darkness, shot after shot. The audience is thereby invited to ponder over whether there was indeed a fair fight between the two or whether a fight had even taken place between the two even. Altogether, these examples illustrate how shadows were used to dispute claims and cast doubts on assertions so as to make them seem unreliable. Considering the contentious nature of all these statements, the audience is once again invited to ponder over how they themselves and by extension, the court and the legal process can possibly make a decision given the difficulties in trying to ascertain the truth.

Beyond this, the interplay between the setting and the actor’s performance is where Rashomon’s critique on the shortcomings of the law is most apparent. Even though the action takes place in the thickness of the woods whereby the seclusion of the personalities involved had created a fantastical air of mystery, Tajomaru tells his story in court whereby it is framed by a backdrop consisting of clearly defined colours and largely parallel lines, creating an expectation of order, formality and logic. Such a sense of rigidity was further supported by the neat placement of those in court as Tajomaru was seated in the foreground alongside the policeman who had arrested him while the Woodcutter and the Priest were seated towards the back of the court. Herein, the expectations created clash with the actor’s performance as the formality of the courtroom is disrupted by Tajomaru’s rowdy behaviour as seen by his raucous laughter whereby he appears to be mocking the judge and everyone involved while speaking in a drunken stupor. As Tajomaru continues to embody the wild energy that characterized the sequence of events that took place in the woods, he carries himself contrary to the somber tone one would expect from a legal setting such that he can be said to perpetuate the sense that the law had broken down. Further emphasizing this is the way Kurosawa thrusts the audience, as unqualified as they may be, into the off-screen positions of the judges such that the need for us to make a conclusion or even draw an opinion on the facts presented is stressed. The overarching effect then is that we are forced to question the importance of how testimonies and information is presented, whether the court can still proceed in the absence of the formalities it is typically associated with and the capacity of the court to even adjudicate fairly.

On top of acting inappropriately, Tajomaru’s performance is also highly stylized, in that he appears to be delivering speeches to an audience, as if he was an actor in a Noh theater play as opposed to a defendant on the stand. Tajomaru’s dramatic performance is also consistent with the theatrical performance of the other actors in the forest. From the way the Wife’s hand scaled Tajomaru’s back elegantly and rhythmically in a spideresque fashion during her embrace with Tajomaru to the way she threw herself at Tajomaru’s feet as she makes her plea towards him, her performance is highly choreographed and staged. Likewise, the same can be said about the swordfight between the Samurai and Tajomaru, right from the very beginning from the manner by which Tajomaru offers the Samurai his unsheathed weapon and how it leads to a well-timed swing by the Samurai at Tajomaru to very end where the Samurai falls neatly into a bush and his demise under Tajomaru’s hands. When seen in light of how such theatrics were part and parcel of the court proceedings, the excessiveness in the actor’s performance links the law to the arts whereby the easy infiltration of the law with pure pretense casts doubt on its capacity to administer justice altogether when the players involved can manipulate it effortlessly. Tajomaru’s theatrical performance in particular is significant as by speaking directly to the camera, an act facilitated by the court’s setup, he also breaks the fourth wall and engages the audience directly and invites them to participate in the story as the judges of the court as well. This blurring of the boundaries between film and theater forms where there is often starkly different expectations on verisimilitude forms an important part of Kurosawa’s critic on truth and the legal system. By showing how the way truth is conveyed can be regarded as an art form, Kurosawa forces us to contemplate over the way we access and assess truth.

As opposed to dismissing truth and the law altogether, Kurosawa is in fact emphasizing the importance of thinking critically so that both constructs can be dealt with adequately and satisfactorily. This is demonstrated by the lack of a resolution to the mystery which forces the audience to form their own decision on the matter through their own reading of the evidence presented. Further, given the associations between the forest and the malleability of truth, the significance in the setting of a crumbling gate as is the choice of having the Woodcutter as a main character is apparent. While the former is a symbol for the crumbling of truth, in the later we have a metaphor for how men can possibly develop meaning and understanding by working on the truth. Altogether, this addresses the concern in the film’s opening lines, “I don’t understand. I just don’t understand. I don’t understand it at all.” Instead of expecting the truth to be given, it is more important to think critically and understand how truth may be obscured so as to properly administer justice.