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  • Essay / Reflections on the film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa

    I have always been interested in Japanese culture, art and cinema. This interest probably arose because I grew up watching Japanese cartoons and animation as a child. But when I went to Japan for the first time in 2013, my interest in Japanese cinema and art grew even more. Last summer, I traveled to Japan for three months to try to better understand Japanese culture and gather my own experiences. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Additionally, during the last two years of my degree program, I studied Polly Lang in Japanese. I have to say that it is a really difficult decision for me to study Japanese, especially learning to read, for which I have to learn three different alphabets. But learning Japanese helps me better understand Japanese artistic culture and cinema. The film camera encountered Japanese filmmakers in the late 19th century, a few years after it had begun to develop in ways very different from those of Western filmmakers. The length of their films, for example, is much longer than in other countries. Japanese cinema is very fascinating to me, especially in its style and storytelling. I'm particularly interested in the style and storytelling of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. All the films Kurosawa has made are masterpieces for me. His films still have a great influence on contemporary films around the world. I believe that his method of storytelling in his films not only allows viewers to gain a different perspective and understanding, but also represents a revolution in contemporary cinematic storytelling. It can be said that Rashomon was for me the most influential of all Kurosawa's films because it asks a question that is at the heart of all cinema: what is reality? Today, all over the world, cinemas have used similar permutations of Rashomon's style millions of times, probably without even realizing it. According to Hutchinson, Akiro Kurosawa was one of the most "Western" Japanese filmmakers. After its release, the Rashamon became globally accepted. The film begins with rain falling on the eponymous ancient ruins of a large structure that was once the city gate, but now stands in a terrible, abandoned neighborhood. This door represents the main setting of the scenario, in which a peasant, a woodcutter and a priest talk about the strange murder of the samurai while waiting for the rain to stop. Over the course of the film, we watch four different aspects of what happened - a rape followed by a murder - first by a lumberjack (Takashi Shimura) who witnessed the crimes, a bandit (Toshiro Mifune) who is the one who committed the rape of a samurai's wife, then the samurai's wife (Machiko Kyo) who was raped, and the ghost or spirit of the samurai (Masayuki Mori), who speaks through the intermediary of mediums after his murder. All of them are presented with four different realities, each telling the audience different and completely contradictory stories with each other. Rashomon is one of the best examples of minimalism in cinema. Kazuo Miyagawa's elegant cinematography and the simple plot, masterfully directed by Kurosawa, present the viewer with two different stories: what we see seems real, but none of it can represent the truth. Although there are flaws in the depictions of the wife in Rashomon, the film has stood the test of time and been considered a classic thanks to the innovative techniques employed by Kurosawa who.