3 PERSPECTIVE
Rashomon Akira Kurosawa (1950) Japan
Kurosawa, Akira. Rashomon. RKO Radio Pictures, 1950.
Japan is an island nation of 126,500,000 million people living on 6,852 islands. The largest island is Honshu. Tokyo, the capital and home of the Japanese film industry, is on the Eastern side of Honshu, 5136 miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco. Hokkaido, Shikoku, Kyushu are other islands in the Japanese Archipelago.
Japan has more than a third of the population of the United States on a land mass comparable in size to California. It is a large country with a large population. Their closest neighbor to the west, across the Sea of Japan, is South Korea. Kamchatka, the wildest and most remote part of Russia, is north of Japan, across the Sea of Okhotsk.
Japan is remote and geographically isolated. The Japanese language is phonetic and was developed without external influences. Writing came late to Japan. Hiragana, the Japanese written language was developed in the 400s.
The Japanese religion is Shinto, the way of the Shi, the spirits that inhabit all things in nature. Japanese poetry, Haiku, is often inspired by nature. Buddhism came to Japan from China and India and is now the most popular religion.
Some of the first Western European traders to come to Japan were Portuguese. The Japanese word for Thank you, Arigato, comes from the Portuguese Obrigado.
Japanese Noh Theatre is characterized by masked actors who use music, dance and elaborate gestures to communicate Buddhist themes.
In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, 30 million people died in this war between China and Japan that eventually turned into WWII.
Yasujiro Ozu was one of the first masters of Japanese Cinema. Tokyo Story is about the end of traditional Japanese lifestyles and the rise of modernism.
Mono no Aware, the pathos of things, the idea that life is essentially static and sad, is a central theme in Ozu’s work. His characters have small realizations rather than huge climactic battles. Japanese houses were traditionally made of paper with screens dividing rooms. Beds were rice mats on the floor. Ozu used a short tripod to film at the level of his characters who were often seated on the floor.
The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and fire bombed Tokyo. The fire devastated Tokyo and incinerated the film industry and the historic films of pre-war Japan.
After WWII, Japan emerged as an economy dedicated to technology and innovation in electronics.
Rashomon was the first international film from Japan. Akira Kurosawa’s film follows the story of a rape and a murder from four perspectives. Each of these characters reveals what he or she saw in court. The film recreates these contradictory testimonies. Rashomon introduced Toshiro Mifune to international audiences and began his collaboration with Kurosawa.
Kurosawa is one of the most influential directors in film history. Many of his Samurai movies were remade as westerns. Yojimbo starring Toshiro Mifune was remade as A Fist Full of Dollars with Clint Eastwood. The Seven Samurai was recreated for American audiences as The Magnificent Seven.
The 1950s was also when Japan launched Godzilla as a reaction to nuclear war and radiation in Japan.
Kurosawa studied international cinema and gained an understanding of the techniques of directors like John Ford and Howard Hawkes before taking the ideas of American Westerns and telling stories based in Japanese History and Culture.
Rashomon is a dramatic film, a movie, with a screenplay and actors portraying the characters. The film is set in the era of Classic Japan with noblemen on horseback and peasants in rags. The actors wear costumes and make-up to evoke this classical era.
The Samurai were the knights of Japan from the 12th Century to the 1800s. They were paid by Daimyo, feudal landlords, and they followed the code of Bushido: Indifference to Pain, Unflinching loyalty, Rectitude, Courage, Benevolence, Politeness, Sincerity, Honor, Loyalty, and Self-control.
Perspective is an important concept in film. How are characters portrayed and how is their story presented in an external or objective point-of-view or through a subjective lens that presents the character’s world as they see it. There is no better presentation in cinematic history of the concept of perspective than Rashomon.