Rashomon

1ª sesión del curso "Rashômon y su contexto. Análisis del cine de Kurosawa", celebrado on-line y patrocinado por la Fundación japón en España. Para preservar los derechos de autor, he recortado el audio de dos fragmentos: el 1º es la escena final del parque del protagonista de IKIRU (VIVIR, A. Kurosawa, 1952) en la que cante la triste canción...; y la 2ª es el principio de LA FORTALEZA ESCONDIDA (Kakushi-toride no san-akunin, A. Kurosawa, 1958) que comparo con STAR WARS (G. Lucas, 1977).

تجسم کنید: مردی – یک سامورایی – در بیشه‌ای به قتل می‌رسد. تمام کسانی که در این عمل درگیر بوده‌اند، یک به یک، در دادگاه حاضر می‌شوند. هیزم‌شکن از وحشتی صحبت می‌کند که وقتی به جسد برخورد، او را دربرگرفت. کشیش شهادت می‌دهد که قبلاً آن مرد را دیده، و ضارب احتمالی را می‌شناسد. سپس ضارب، تاجومارو ، در محضر دادگاه حاضر می‌شود. او ادعا می‌کند که سامورایی را بَسته، همسرش را در مقابلش اغوا کرده، و پس از آن سامورایی را در مبارزه‌ای با شمشیر کُشته است. ممکن است برخی از خوانندگان طرح کلّی این پلات را بشناسند. این فیلم، شاهکارِ آکیرا کوروساوا ، راشومون  (1950) است، که ببیندگان را به ضیافتی منحصربفرد مهمان می‌کند: اندیشیدن درباب صفحه‌ی سینما، و فلسفیدن نه از طریق مناظره‌ای ساختارمند، و نه زبانی غامض، بل از طریق داستان‌سرایی بدیع، تصویرسازی‌های ذهنی اقناع‌کننده، و هنر فیلم‌برداری نوآورانه.

N.B. The uploaded paper is a slightly longer, earlier version of “Rashomon perceived: The challenge of forging a transnationally shared view of Kurosawa’s legacy,” in Davis, Blair, Robert Anderson, Jan Wall eds., Rashomon Effects: Rashomon, Kurosawa and their legacies. Routledge, Abingdon, 2016. The present version, which carries a title different from the chapter in the above book, contains more citations which may be of value to researchers.

True. At the core of Rashomon is the unreliability of the narrators. But the thing which is unreliable about them is how their tales differ upon fixed matters. One such issue is the dagger. The account of the dagger of which the four characters speak, varies to such an extent that one might presume that there are several daggers in the story. Indeed there might. This essay tries to explore the dagger in Rashomon not only as part of the narratives presented, but as an expression of the narrators' perspectives. The dagger seen in this changeable light, is somewhat similar to the fan used in the Japanese Noh theatre. For, in Noh theatres, the drama seems to revolve about the symbolic function the fan conjectures as an object of interaction between performer and audience; given that it is chiefly through the fan that most characters express thought and action. The implication of both these objects in their context can better be understood through Thing theory – a theory that suggests that the inanimate world has constantly helped form and transform mankind. So does the dagger transform the woodcutter, the samurai, his wife, her rapist? Perhaps.

"È stato il primo film giapponese distribuito in Occidente, il primo a vincere il Leone d'Oro, il primo a...": inizia spesso così il discorso su Rashomon. un'opera da tutti riconosciuta come un capolavoro della cinematografia giapponese, idealizzata dal pubblico, in molti casi equivocata dalla critica, citata e copiata da altri film e poi da fumetti, videogiochi, serial TV e pièce teatrali. Questo volume "spoglia" la pellicola da ogni forma di esegesi troppo influenzata dalla sua "aura" e dipendente dal dovere dell'interpretazione giusta, ridando valore al quadro congiunturale e agli interventi dei soggetti che hanno concorso alla sua genesi. Inoltre, giacché la pellicola di Kurosawa parla pur sempre di un delitto irrisolto, Dalla Gassa esplora a fondo l'ambiguità all'origine dell'enigma, esaminando quegli espedienti formali e narrativi che slegano l'attività percettiva dello spettatore dalla sua attitudine ermeneutica e fanno di Rashomon un testo aperto a una pluralità quasi infinita di interpretazioni. Conducendo sul testo filmico un'analisi puntuale, filologicamente minuziosa e fondata sullo studio delle sue origini letterarie e delle circostanze economico-sociali in cui è nato, questo saggio fornisce al lettore una guida suggestiva al mistero rashomoniano.

The dissertation is aligned to current changes in the academia, notably the transdisciplinary interpretation and understanding of human phenomena. Grounded in communication, the dissertation has drawn on concepts from information science, film studies, and cognitive science as well as philosophy and other disciplines. The objective of this research is to unravel the way film as an environment is observed, marked, and indicated by spectators and thus how meaning is assigned to a film. 

This transdisciplinary approach draws on autopoiesis, laws of form, reader response and cybernetic communication. The research employs a constructivist approach to understand how viewers assign meaning to the films they watch. The research is based on two premises: information emerges from people’s indications of an environment as they observe it, and film is an environment for observation that attains meaning, in other words become informative as spectators make indications of their observations of film. 

Rashomon, the celebrated film of Akira Kurosawa, is the vehicle to understand the process of sense-making as constructing form. Viewers’ comments at Amazon.com provide evidence of how these individuals observe the film and make sense of it by making distinctions. A reader-response analysis was used to interpret the comments; this researcher’s analysis is yet a higher scale of indication of observation. 

In the process of reader-response, the researcher as an observer is cued or perturbed to indicate that Rashomon, an impressionistic film noted for its cinematic style, has taken an expressionist form because of the discourse constructed, and being constructed, by various observers generating meaning over an open-ended palette. 

This research stresses the functional necessity for transcending disciplinary borders in order to understand communication as multistage observation constructing meaning and thereby constantly generating forms for observation. Such forms are made intelligible by virtue of our having structural coupling, i.e. a shared set of tokens such as language. Humans as observers are constant producers of forms and diligent generators of tokens that expand our horizon.

Communication is thus an ever-emerging, meaning-construction process. We observe the world—tangible and intangible—that we interpret, make distinctions, and externalize through indication; these are in turn observed, distinguished, and indicated by other observers. This observational understanding of communication in fact facilitates the unending emergence of horizon and therefore communication is emergent, sense-making, and horizon-expanding.

Akira Kurosawa has had a profound influence on world cinema as well as international culture affected films of Akira Kurosawa. He is the one of the directors who combines Japanese culture with universal concepts, perspective and wording. If we consider, the themes which he has had used in most of his films, they are in the same ballpark because they have one common theme and question which appeal to all humankind. He questions: ‘’Why can’t people be happier together?’’ To asked that question to answer it- which is what Kurosawa has done in every one of his major films. People cannot be happier because they are people, because they are human.  In this paper, concepts of humanism, good and evil, reality and illusion, heroism, and intercultural position of Akira Kurosawa’s films, in particular Rashomon(1950), Ikiru(1952), and Yojimbo(1961) will be researched by utilizing from ‘’The Films of Akira Kurosawa’’(1984), written by Donald Richie, ‘’The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa: The Warrior’s Camera’’(1991), written by Stephen Prince and ‘’Akira Kurusawa and Intertextual Cinema’’(1994), written by James Goodwin.

OBJECTIVE:  This study investigates maternal mortality in West Java on two levels.  First, a review is made of the literature on maternal mortality internationally and with specific focus on West Java.  Second, using an innovative method of qualitative data collection (the Rashomon Technique), the importance of different people in dealing with cases of maternal illness and death is analyzed to determine how interventions might change behavior in ways which would better preserve the lives of pregnant and post-partum women in Indonesia.

Rashomon, the celebrated film of Akira Kurosawa, was revisited to understand the process of sense-making in the film from a constructive perspective. Viewers' comments at Amazon.com provided evidence of how these individuals observe the film and make sense of it by making distinctions. A reader-response analysis was used to interpret the comments. The researcher's analysis is yet another scale of indication of observation of observation towards another level of meaning.

Resumo: Explora-se neste artigo a apropriação de episódios retirados da coletânea clássica japonesa Konjaku Monogatarishû por Akutagawa Ryûnosuke, para a construção do conto Rashômon, publicado em 1915. Além de conservar os principais temas, os personagens e a ambientação da história original, Akutagawa também é capaz de utilizar técnicas para fazer alusão à tradição oral dessas curtas narrativas conhecidas como setsuwa, que normalmente eram transmitidas por gerações por meio de contadores de história. Examina-se como Akutagawa, em sua adaptação da história clássica, consegue fornecer maior riqueza de detalhes e explorar as razões que teriam levado os personagens a adotar as atitudes observadas na narrativa. Discute-se, ainda, dilemas de caráter existencial e ético enfrentados pelos personagens, bem como a questão da subjetividade da verdade, que é um tema abordado por Akutagawa também em outros contos.
Palavras-chave: Akutagawa Ryûnosuke, período Heian, Konjaku Monogatarishû, literatura moderna japonesa, tradição oral, dilema ético, subjetividade da verdade.

Abstract: This article explores the use of stories from the classical Japanese anthology Konjaku Monogatarishû by Akutagawa Ryûnosuke, for the creation of the tale Rashômon, published in 1915. Akutagawa was able to maintain the central motifs, characters and the overall atmosphere of the original story, while using techniques to make allusions to the oral tradition of these short anecdotes known as setsuwa, which were usually passed down through generations by storytellers. This paper examines how Akutagawa, in this tale borrowed from the classical anthology, was able to supply the reader with a greater array of details and to analyze the reasons 1 Article received and accepted in 2019. 2 Ministério da Economia, Brasília, Brasil; Doutor em Desenvolvimento Internacional pela Universidade de Nagoya; wald_russo@yahoo.com; waldemiro.junior@planejamento.gov.br (ORCID iD http:// orcid.org/0000-0002-0655-7999).

In the film Rashomon,  director Kurosawa utilizes subjective narrative to support the notion that truth is relative. Several witnesses observe a crime from different vantage points however, no two stories are alike. Consequently, the audience does not know who to believe. Purposely, Kurosawa does not establish an objective reality. He makes the point that observers will interpret, manipulate, or remember details differently. Sometimes, witnesses add or delete information to protect their reputations. Others want to sway opinions to exonerate themselves. Some have an agenda and falsify their accounts of an incident. Most witnesses consciously, or subconsciously, do not offer truthful versions of events. The film brings to life the phenomenon of relativism.

The article explores the manifestly allegorical nature of Kurosawa's controversial 1950 film Rashomon, and how it was directly responding to the dishonesty of individuals called before recent war crimes trials (1946-48). After noting the overt symbolism of the film's opening setting, which manifestly alludes to the plight of Japan, the trials which dominated the nation's media in the late 1940s are also discussed (it notes 29 employees of the film company had been purged). As is stated at the film's onset, the community was distressed because it was evident that lies were being told and the truth concealed: similarly, in post-war Japan no one knew who to believe about war atrocities. Testimony is compromised, Rashomon shows, because the guilty seek to hide their misdeeds. A direct comparison is made with Clouzot's film from the Nazi-Occupation Period, Le Corbeau of 1943, which told a story of village life to likewise highlight dishonesty and betrayal in time of war. As with Rashomon, there was a local backlash against the film due to the plain, if uncomfortable contemporary message it delivered. Kurosawa's use of a medieval setting/story to moralise, again, about post-war Japan in his later samurai films, 'Seven Samurai' and 'Yojimbo', is considered; although, as is pointed out, his allegorical purpose was completely lacking in the popular Western versions of these films, 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'A Fistful of Dollars'. (Another cowboy film, 'High Noon', is praised in passing and likened to Kurosawa's approach.) Rashomon's seeming influence on Ingmar Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal', another allegorical tale of ethics and personal conduct against a medieval war setting, is also highlighted. 5pp

Десятилетие на рубеже XIX−XX вв. (1895-1905) для большого числа отечественных театралов это, прежде всего, − четыре пьесы Чехова: «Чайка», «Дядя Ваня», «Три сестры» и «Вишнёвый сад». Драматургическое порубежье XX−XXI вв. − время, когда вниманию зрителей представлено сразу несколько разного рода «переделок» чеховских пьес: «Голубое сало» Вл.Сорокина (1999; тексты «клона Чехов-3»), «Чайка» Б.Акунина (2000), «Русское варенье» Л.Улицкой (2003). Из зарубежных авторов к этому списку можно было бы прибавить пьесу словацкого драматурга В.Климачека «Чехов-боксёр: Сенсационный проект царского телевидения» (Čechov-Boxer, 1999; русский перевод опубликован в 2008 году) и постановку польского режиссёра Кр.Люпы (2007). Большая часть из них в той или иной мере явились едва ли ни первыми в истории сиквелами чеховских пьес. Если оставить за скобками шумные промоутерские кампании, которые сопровождали постановки этих произведений, ни одно из них публика не приняла. «отрицательный результат − тоже результат» и даёт хорошую пищу для глубокого анализа изучаемого явления в новом, непривычном ракурсе.
Наиболее перспективен для детального рассмотрения − случай с «Чайкой» Б.Акунина, текст которого самый «конструктивно» сложный и одновременно предельно ориентированный (даже провокативным названием) на первоисточник.

Oedipus kendince hep hakikatin peşindeydi, gözünün önündekileri göremeyen ama her yanda hakikatin peşine düşen bir hakikat budalasına dönüşmüştü. Kendi anne-babasının öz olup olmadıkları kuşkusuyla cesaretini toplayıp, zaten bildiği gerçekle yüzleşebilmek için kahine giden Oedipus, aslında en usta olduğu konunun kendini aldatmak olduğunu henüz keşfetmemişti. En nihayetinde o an geldiğinde, hakikat karşısına sevgili annesi ve karısı, Kraliçe Iakoste’nin ölü bedeni olarak dikildiğinde yapabileceği tek şeyi tereddütsüz yaptı; kendi gözlerini oydu.
Kendi hakikatlerimize ne kadar dayanabiliriz? “Kendini bil” öğüdü Delfi Tapınağı’ndan, Yunus Emre’nin dizelerine dek birçok öğretinin ana öğüdü iken bunun önünde engeller olduğu da açıktır.
Tarihin hiçbir döneminde insanın kendi doğasına bu dönemde olduğu kadar yabancılaşmadığını öne sürebiliriz. Günümüzde yalnızca dervişlerin ya da kralların değil, her sınıftan insanın kendi hakikatine duyduğu gereksinim ile kentteki terapi odalarının niceliği arasında bir doğru orantı olduğunu söyleyebiliriz. Hakikat arayışının metaforu haline gelmiş bu odalar hakikate ne kadar dayanaklıdır?

Kurosawa's intriguing masterpiece Rashōmon might appear as a manifesto of post-modern relativism, according to which we cannot know any " objective reality " , but only alternative subjective " versions " of the world. This is also what some quotes by Kurosawa seem to suggest. No doubt, the accounts of an event given from alternative conceptual, epistemic, or psychological perspectives may be very different. Yet, such stories may all correspond to the actual world, and often, by relativising them to the subjects' standpoints, we can grasp some important features of the subject-independent reality. In fact, by this method the actual course of events in Rashōmon can be reconstructed in a fairly plausible and unambiguous way. Although the spectator can gather her clues only from the apparently confusing and unreliable accounts of the various characters, perhaps Kurosawa's story is less enigmatic than he himself thought. The script also bears striking resemblances to the puzzles of quantum mechanics. Actually, if current theories are right, microphysical reality is even more elusive than historic reality, portrayed by Kurosawa through the deforming mirrors of subjective drives and motivations. But upon reflection, even in quantum mechanics there is no need to give up the idea that there exists an objective, if awkward, reality, and that we can know it at least partially and perspectively.

The dissertation is aligned to current changes in the academia, notably the transdisciplinary interpretation and understanding of human phenomena. Grounded in communication, the dissertation has drawn on concepts from information science, film studies, and cognitive science as well as philosophy and other disciplines. The objective of this research is to unravel the way film as an environment is observed, marked, and indicated by spectators and thus how meaning is assigned to a film. This transdisciplinary approach draws on autopoiesis, laws of form, reader response and cybernetic communication. The research employs a constructivist approach to understand how viewers assign meaning to the films they watch. The research is based on two premises: information emerges from people’s indications of an environment as they observe it, and film is an environment for observation that attains meaning, in other words become informative as spectators make indications of their observations of film. Rashomon, the celebrated film of Akira Kurosawa, is the vehicle to understand the process of sense-making as constructing form. Viewers’ comments at Amazon.com provide evidence of how these individuals observe the film and make sense of it by making distinctions. A reader-response analysis was used to interpret the comments; this researcher’s analysis is yet a higher scale of indication of observation. In the process of reader-response, the researcher as an observer is cued or perturbed to indicate that Rashomon, an impressionistic film noted for its cinematic style, has taken an expressionist form because of the discourse constructed, and being constructed, by various observers generating meaning over an open-ended palette. This research stresses the functional necessity for transcending disciplinary borders in order to understand communication as multistage observation constructing meaning and thereby constantly generating forms for observation. Such forms are made intelligible by virtue of our having structural coupling, i.e. a shared set of tokens such as language. Humans as observers are constant producers of forms and diligent generators of tokens that expand our horizon. Communication is thus an ever-emerging, meaning-construction process. We observe the world—tangible and intangible—that we interpret, make distinctions, and externalize through indication; these are in turn observed, distinguished, and indicated by other observers. This observational understanding of communication in fact facilitates the unending emergence of horizon and therefore communication is emergent, sense-making, and horizon-expanding.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigates maternal mortality in West Java on two levels. First, a review is made of the literature on maternal mortality internationally and with specific focus on West Java. Second, using an innovative method of qualitative data collection (the Rashomon Technique), the importance of different people in dealing with cases of maternal illness and death is analyzed to determine how interventions might change behavior in ways which would better preserve the lives of pregnant and post-partum women in Indonesia.

Ciné-Illusion

Département de psychiatrieUniversité de Montréal

Rashōmon
Un film de Akira Kurasawa (1950)

« L’Effet Rashōmon »
Un cadavre, deux témoins, trois comptes, quatre versions
 
Présenté et commenté par
Vincenzo Di Nicola, MPhil, MD, PhD, DFAPA
Professeur de psychiatrie, U de M
Chef de pédopsychiatrie – IUSMM/HMR

21 NOVEMBRE 2018 
18h30 à 21h30 

Centre de recherche du NCHUM 
900 St-Denis, Pavillon R, Montréal
L’Amphithéâtre - 5e étage