Rashomon questions

Catherine Alexander      Jonathan Belcher      Sarah Beth Campbell      Park Carrere
Andrew Cox      Charlotte Marie DuPre      Drew Heath      John Howard
Christina Kim      Mike Letourneau      Jenny Lu      Michael Mathison
Aubrey Miner      Paige Smith      Meg Strother      Rachel Williams      Kate Zawyrucha

The Film

The events in Rashomon are set in the 12th century (at the end of the Heian Period, a time of social disintegration and general distress), but used to present some very contemporary (indeed, eternal...) questions about the basic nature of humans, questions that are legitimate parts of any study of cultures. 'What is truth?' is a common way to summarize the underlying question, but we are also obliged to consider why people lie?

Some other less cosmic questions arise. No simple answers to these, just some places to begin talking:

I don't think that it's practical or worthwhile to spend much time trying to sort out who is 'lying' (since everybody tells stories with inconsistencies), but there surely are some empirical questions that forensics might ask, such as: was the samurai killed with the dagger or the sword? (are both missing?) In both Tajomaru's version and the woodcutter's version (at least in the film), it's the sword, in the hands of Tajomaru (but honorably or not is the variation); in both the wife's and the samurai's versions, it's the [missing] dagger.

Here are some of the things I wrote down while watching the film, more or less in the line of characterizations of 'human nature' by various characters:

It's human to lie. We can't even be honest with ourselves (Commoner)
I don't mind a lie. Not if it's interesting. (Commoner)
Men are so weak... that's why they lie (Priest)
Women lead you on with their tears. They even fool themselves (Commoner)
Everyone wants to forget unpleasant things, so they make up stories (Commoner)
Goodness is make-believe... forget the bad stuff (Commoner)
the Demon fled in fear of the ferocity of man (Priest)
Women are weak by nature (Commoner)
If men don't trust each other, this world is hell (Priest)
In the end you cannot understand the things men do (Commoner)
If you are not selfish, you can't survive (Commoner)
All men are selfish and dishonest. They all have excuses (Woodcutter)
You can't afford not to be suspicious of people these days (Woodcutter)

Kurosawa himself (in his Something like an autobiography [PN1998.A3 K789413 1982]) says :

Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings --the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. (quoted in Andy Klein's summary, 244)

What do we miss by not being Japanese?

Each account would have its own particular verbal form, reflecting the gender and social status of the speaker... In Rashomon as written text, the social distinctions between samurai, bandit and woodcutter, and the gender identity of the wife (vividly reflected in Japanese language usage) would be crucial. And indeed, even in translation, the different speaking styles of those who make statements in Akutagawa's original story, 'In the Grove' are very apparent... (Roy Ames Action and Image 101)

Consider the protrayal of the Woman, and consider Jon Mellen's "The Woman in Rashomon":

And once, of course the stereotype is elevated to a symbol in the arts, presented as an image of truth, the impact of this perpetuated myth in turn conditions the view women have of themselves. It is indeed a vicious circle, as yet unbroken in Japan by profound social change. (see handout for reference)

How does Rashomon-the-film fit into contemporary Japan? Consider the DATE of the film, and the Japanese society into which it opened in 1950. Here's what James Davidson says:

The story told by each of the three participants protects his self-respect. In the account of the Woodcutter, the common man, they are all revealed as frauds. The fight is a travesty on that described by the bandit, after which the mighty Tajomaru, heaving with fright and exertion, goes off to be betrayed into capture by a rebellion of his own innards. Bitter satire on the heroic virtues finds a natural response in a defeated nation...

How did the old beliefs and loyalties die? Did they perish in a defeat at arms which 'liberated' those who had already begun to see through them? Did they, in a manner of speaking, annihilate themselves in shame and sorrow for a people no longer worthy of them? Were they destroyed by those who held them dear because they were an unbearable reminder of duties that could no longer be fulfilled? Or were they done in, in an uncertain scuffle of ideals and proclamations and conflicting directives that left nothing firm and whole in their place? Finally, since ideas do not die as men die, the question remains, are they really dead? It seems unlikely that thoughtful Japanese would see Rashomon without having some of these questions brought to mind... (in Donald Richie (ed.) Rashomon: a film by Akira Kurosawa 1969:220-221)

We need to keep in mind that this and other films we'll see are standing as surrogates for understanding, allowing us a safe (but illusory) sense of immersion into a world not our own. This is not so very different from the Japanese tourist who goes to a Montana dude ranch in order to experience the world of the West... which was already illusory. And cf the worlds of Disney and so on...

Rashomon as Concept and Meme

Andy Klein's summary of Rashomon in The A List: the National Society of Film Critics' 100 essential films begins

It's rare for any film's title to become permanently ensconced in English language usage, let alone a foreign film: yet, describe something as "one of those Rashomon situations," and a fair number of Americans (only a fraction of whom will have ever seen the movie) will know exactly what you mean --"he says one thing, she says another, the third guy says something else, and who knows what reality is anyway?" That the concept has been invoked more than once on TV shows like The Simpsons and The X-Files says something about how deeply it's infiltrated the culture. (241)

(Klein quotes Marge and Homer: [M:] "You liked Rashomon!" [H:]" That's not how I remember it.")

I did a number of searches for occurences of 'Rashomon' and found it turning up in many curious connections. One especially useful instance (from JSTOR) which raises a whole lot of questions for Anthropology is John Rhoades' commentary on an article by Karl Heider in which he likens the Woodcutter to an ethnographer: an 'uninvolved' outsider who reports what he saw ...with the minor omission of mentioning the disappearance of the dagger.

[like an anthropologist] The observer is thus a person of understandable failings... but he nonetheless does a reasonably good job of describing what he as an observer sees the participants doing... In other words, the film supports the notion of an ethnographic "truth" achieved in the face of informants' variant testimony. (171)

An Annie keyword search for rashomon yields 20 hits

Consider ways in which Rashomon casts light on (or raises questions about) the nature and contents of Anthropology, and there are many strands to braid:

from Raphael Israeli Poison: modern manifestations of a blood libel (DS110 .W47 I 86 2002):

The classic Rashomon story, in which the very participants in the same event see it from different viewpoints, naturally raises the perennial questions of truth versus history, fact versus perception, and the interaction between all those concepts. Is truth something factual that happened or an event which unfolded, or is truth the way people understand or relate to those happenings? Is truth culture-bound or is it universal? Is it an objective, measurable quantity, or a subjective, value-laden quality? Is what historians tell us the Truth, or is every narrative, presented to and by the historian, a section of the Truth? Can history, fact, and truth be related by anyone objectively and independently of values and perceptions? What is more operationally true: something that happened but people dismiss as insignificant, or something that did not happen but occupies the center of their concerns and activities? (1)

Belcher-san's brilliant find: www.rashomon.blogspot.com

Anthropology

What's appealing, interesting, attractive about Anthropology? What can Informants tell us, both those who have taken Anthropology courses AND those who haven't?
So what is the territory of Anthropology? And where did the discipline spring from? What is Anthropology up to now? Difficult questions, because the points of view are so varied. 40 years ago it all seemed a lot clearer than it does now, and Anthropology mostly dealt with exotic peoples, others, and sought to produce knowledge about the human essence underlying the great variety of cultures comprising the world.

The Wikipedia article gives us a lot to work with, beginning

Anthropology is the study of humankind (see genus Homo). It is holistic in two senses: it is concerned with all humans at all times, and with all dimensions of humanity. Central to Anthropology is the concept of culture, and the notion that human nature is culture; that our species has evolved a universal capacity to conceive of the world symbolically, to teach and learn such symbols socially, and to transform the world (and ourselves) based on such symbols.

In the Public Mind, Anthropology is often confused with Archaeology, and/or is thought to deal mostly with "primitive" cultures, or at least with the exotic ("Natives") and the "traditional". Even the very idea of "primitive" is a problem --turns out that the languages of technologically 'primitive' peoples are no less complex than those of the most technologically advanced, and there's no reason to think that the minds in their heads are any less complex either. It's relatively easy to describe how "the Natives" organize themselves, and how they act or behave, but getting at how they think, and understanding the nuances of their beliefs and motivations, is much more challenging.

Anthropology's 19th century roots were at least partly in the service of colonialism, and through much of the 20th century Anthropology was entangled with 'development' --with the need to understand (and often enough to control) subject peoples and 'modernizing' nations (documenting the "Natives" --but who pays? who benefits? ...an uncomfortable legacy).

At the same time, Anthropology has had a strong critical streak as well, in opposition to excesses of hegemonism and exploitation --sometimes radical and sometimes reactionary. And Anthropology is also often associated with the idea of 'cultural relativism', in its most extreme form "the principle that any judgment of society as a whole is invalid: individuals are judged against the standards of their society; societies themselves have no larger context in which judgement is even meaningful." (from Wikipedia article on moral relativism). In general we might say that Anthropology provides counters to ethnocentric views of the world.

Anthropology has generally encouraged connections with other disciplines, so there are many compound subdisciplines --psychological Anthropology, ethnomusicology, biological Anthropology, legal Anthropology... and so on. In the last 30 years or so (and in keeping with intellectual developments in other disciplines) an important division has occurred along intellectual lines, with the development of a subdiscipline sometimes called 'symbolic Anthropology'. Here's how Roger Keesing characterized the state about 15 years ago:

"Symbolic" or "interpretive" modes of Anthropology are increasingly ascendant, and fashionable... Anthropology is an exploration, an excavation, of the cumulated, embodied symbols of other peoples, a search for meanings, for hidden connections, for deeper saliences than those presented by the surface evidence of ethnography. Taking cultures as texts, symbolic Anthropology seeks to reveal them deeply...

Symbolic Anthropology, like literary criticism and other hermeneutic enterprises, is dependent on interpretive gifts, leaps of intuition, virtuosity in seeing hidden meanings enciphered as tropes. As such it can be done more or less insightfully, more or less faithfully, more or less carefully; cultures as texts can be read brilliantly or recklessly or clumsily... (161)

...[but] cultures do not simply constitute webs of significance, systems of meaning that orient humans to one another and their world. They constitute ideologies, disguising human political and economic realities as cosmically ordained... Cultures are webs of mystification as well as signification. We need to ask who creates and defines cultural meanings, and to what ends... Cultures, then, must be situated, placed in a context --historically, economically, politically. (161-162) (Anthropology as interpretive quest, Current Anthropology 28:161-176, 1987)

One of the essential elements of Anthropology is fieldwork, immersion in the milieu in which informants live, and research by question-asking. This implies sophisticated longuistic skills, or reliance on interpreters. It also raises the problem of involvement in what one is attempting to study: can observe without affecting?

"The Field" has certain realities: discomfort, loneliness, impossibility of actually doing what was planned...

The notion of work with 'untouched primitive peoples' has perhaps always been an illusion, and certainly is now. And in the late 20th century, as the opportunities for fieldwork shrank with geopolitical realities, the whole notion of what one is supposed to do also changed. Now there are plentiful opportunities to study one's OWN society (examples: contract archaeology, Silicon Valley subcultures, enterprises...)

Still we have the basic objective of trying to get INTO people's heads, and the idea that so doing will provide sophisticated understanding to counterbalance the (often simplistic) Western media dominance of 'reality', and lead students toward to changed perspectives on their unconsidered assumptions: cross-cultural contact is GOOD for education.

Anthropology still has the objective of exploring Human Nature by encompassing its variety ...a counterbalance to other disciplines (Psychology and Sociology, for example) whose generalizations about Human Nature are principally based on experiments/studies of Europeans and North Americans...

Remind ourselves of what the Commoner says:

In the end, you cannot understand the things men do.