Abstract
In this paper, I wish to make clear one of the secrets that Rashomon has had a great impact on and stimulated audiences all over the world for over 60 years. In order to achieve this objective, I’ll focus on relativistic views we can derive from it. In my opinion, certain phases of the relativistic view in the film remain to be considered, and only when we can explicate these phases do we get to one of the secrets of the film which has not been referred to so far.
In the second section of this paper, comparing the story of Rashomon with that of In A Grove in brief, I’ll present a synopsis of Rashomon. In the third section, I would like to shed light on certain phases of the relativistic view in Rashomon. These phases add something more than the so-called relativity of the truth to the film. In the fourth section, I’ll explicate implications of Rashomon from a phenomenological point of view and, in conclusion, make clear the significance of our phenomenological inquiry of Rashomon for those who are living in daily life, as well as for phenomenologists or sociologists.
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Notes
- 1.
Rashomon also won an Academy Honorary Award at the 24th Academy Awards in 1952. Before Rashomon won the prize, Japanese films had not been paid attention to outside Japan. At that time, Masaichi Nagata, the president of Daiei which was the Greater Japan Motion Picture Company, had been asked in United States: “Are movies made in Japan, too?” Since the success of Rashomon, the film has contributed to global recognition of Japanese films.
- 2.
- 3.
It is usually said that the film Rashomon is based on two short stories by Akutagawa: In A Grove (1922) and “Rashomon” (1915). But, actually, though the film Rashomon by Kurosawa has the same title as the short story “Rashomon” by Akutagawa, Akutagawa’s “Rashomon” does not take up the murder case told from different perspectives at all. If one watches and reads them one by one, the film Rashomon would be seen as entirely different from Akutagawa’s “Rashomon.” Without knowledge about discussions which Kurosawa and Hashimoto (a scenarist) had had on the scenario of the film Rashomon, it is difficult to understand that the film Rashomon is “based on” Akutagawa’s “Rashomon” with few exceptions. In the film Rashomon, only settings such as the devastated Rashomon gate and atmosphere of desolation in Kyoto of the era seems to be taken from Akutagawa’s “Rashomon.”
- 4.
In the opening scene, under the Rashomon gate, the woodcutter, priest, and commoner are engaged in a quest for knowledge about what really happened.
- 5.
Here, I take up the situation, which is concerned with “working” rather than (covert) performing, in a Schutzian sense. Unlike performing, working is irrevocable in the sense that it has changed the outer world (Schutz 1945, p. 217).
- 6.
Within my research, I cannot find any paper which points out this phase of Rashomon. In terms of the applicability of the majority rule, one may derive one of the interpretations from Rashomon that Kurosawa is conscious of the danger of the tyranny of the majority.
- 7.
With regard to the point, some critics maintain that the woodcutter’s confession has the status of “a privileged position” and “a third party,” too, or that the woodcutter’s confession can be regarded – at least – more objective than the other three persons’ accounts.
- 8.
This implies that every description of an event by human beings depends upon the viewpoint from which it is illustrated. No one can stand in the position of God.
- 9.
If we are to make a judgment on whose story is true, we have to make a decision on it in spite of the fact that no evidence can be found in the film.
- 10.
It is one of the sociological interpretations of the film (Hama 1999).
- 11.
As I refer to in the first section of this paper, the director Kurosawa’s reluctance to talk about the meaning of his film is well known.
- 12.
It would be one of the interpretations of Rashomon. But then, another question of why the priest trusts the woodcutter in the last scene would be raised.
- 13.
I use “ambiguity” in the sense of Merleau-Ponty (Merleau-Ponty 1945). In this paper, I confine myself to show a novel interpretation of Rashomon, and only to indicate that my interpretation of Rashomon has relevance to “ambiguity.” For whereas the concept of “ambiguity” can apply to an interpretation of Rashomon, considerations of Rashomon, it seems to me, have the possibility to develop an inquiry into “ambiguity” in turn. In my idea, in order to develop the study of “ambiguity,” findings in Schutzian methodological postulates (Nasu 1997, 2005) are very helpful. His findings about Schutzian methodological postulates make clear “ambiguity” in social scientific constructs.
- 14.
For this reason, I do not discuss such subject matters as the roles of temporality, transcendental intersubjectivity, and ethics in this paper. As Michael Barber suggested (in the International Conference: Phenomenology, Social Sciences, and the Arts), each theme which he deals with in his book (Barber 2004) is very interesting to me. Rashomon stimulates us to develop phenomenology. If we deal with and discuss these themes fully, another paper focusing on each theme is needed. I have reformulated the fundamental problem of sociology from the Schutzian point of view (Kawano 2012), in order not to fall into the disasters of the procrustean bed.
- 15.
“Ambiguity” of Merleau-Ponty can be understood from the viewpoint of Bataille’s philosophy of nonknowledge. With regard to the relationship between Schutz’s thought and Bataille’s philosophy of nonknowledge, I have discussed in my earlier work (Kawano 2007).
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Kawano, K. (2014). A Phenomenological Inquiry of Rashomon . In: Barber, M., Dreher, J. (eds) The Interrelation of Phenomenology, Social Sciences and the Arts. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 69. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01390-9_21
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