REAL-UNREAL: PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOPATHOLOGY, ART: Nihilism and Reality in Kurosawa's Rashomon**

RASHOMON is the title of a 1949 movie by the great Akira Kurosawa, Japanese director and screenwriter, whose plot is freely based on two short stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke.

WARNING: This essay has SPOILERS. To best understand its meanings, you ought to first watch the entire movie. Be sure, you'll never regret it since it is such a remarkable masterpiece.

"In a becoming world, 'reality' is either a simplification for practical purposes, or an illusion based on gross organs, or still a gap in time of becoming. Denial and nihilization of the world through logics stem from the fact that we oppose the word 'being' to 'non-being', thus denying the concept of 'becoming' " Friedrich Nietzsche, Posthumous Fragment, SW, v.12, Fall 1887

"Against positivism, which stops at phenomena, and states 'there are only facts', I would say no, there are no facts at all, but rather just interpretations. We cannot find anything 'in itself': it may be a nonsense to want something like that". Same author in 'The Will to Power', 'Principle of a New Values Setting'.

1) First Scenes

Under an abandoned porch in medieval Kyoto, named Rashomon, three people meet in search for protection against a heavy rain: a wandering monk, a woodcutter and a vagabond. Lumberjack and monk report their horror at a history of rape followed by violent death, about which they had been called to testify before a court. The walker listens to the monk, to his pious and hopeless words, about never having seen anything so shocking: not even the worst crimes nor wars, nor fire, nor epidemics. Scorning his words, the walker interrupts the monk’s speech, warning not to be there to hear sermons, and utters that only interesting stories deserve to be told. Even lies might be worth, being enough whether narrator is able to catch our vivid attention. He then scolds the monk to stop with sermons! The woodcutter comes up then beginning to tell his own version, the same reported to the police. Right now, the scene shifts to the inquest room and thereafter to the woods.

2) The version of the Lumberjack

As did every morning, he went out in search of good wood in the forest. About a bush, it was faced suddenly with some unusual things there: a woman's hat, pieces of clothing, "all of no value". Until he saw a corpse and, terrified, ran into town to report the finding to the police. When the judge asked him if he had seen a dagger there, the woodcutter denied it vehemently.
3) The Monk's Testimony

He told to the judicial authority, in a melancholy tone, that he had crossed with the man now dead, when the latter was coming down the road on foot, pulling the horse on which his wife followed. That happened about three days ago. She wore a wide-brimmed hat with a veil to cover her entire face.
The monk ended his brief report stating that he could never have foreseen that such husband would end up that way, but adds that human existence is very fragile, "evanescent as the morning dew, and brief as lightning." He reports nothing on the woman's body or on her beauty.

4) The Policeman's Speech

Proud of his achievement, the cop said to have caught Tajomaru, the most dreaded and wanted bandit ever, easily since he was lying on the floor on a riverside, certainly shot down by a stolen horse. This way he would have been punished in a fair payback for the wrongs he had committed. He ended this report uttering that among this bandit's crimes, the now investigated one might surely count.

5)Tajomaru's Report

Upon hearing his captor say that he would have been knocked off the horse as punishment, Tajomaru bursts into laughter and says he was there, by the river, shot down by fatigue and thirst: perhaps had drunk contaminated water from some source ... Despite saying he had killed, yes, that man, he explains that at first he intended differently.
---"On a very hot afternoon, I was lying under the canopy of a tree by the roadside, when a gentle breeze woke me up.
"Were it not for that breeze, and nothing at all would have happened."
He saw then a man driving a horse upon which followed a most beautiful woman. As they passed right in front of him, a few meters far, the same breeze lifted the veil with which the traveler lady covered her face, and an urgent desire to have her sprang up in Tajomaru's soul. He would kill her husband, if necessary, but also thought he could get rid of him otherwise.
So he let them follow for over a stretch of road and through a shortcut amidst the dense forest and then suddenly jumps in front of the couple. Skullduggery he showed and offered an 'invaluable' sword to that man, telling him he could buy it for a 'very low price'. And not only the sword since there were a lot of precious objects withdrawn from ancient tombs by himself. For that purpose, it would be enough to walk along tracks int the forest, till reaching the hideout all these goods.
So did both men, leaving the woman alone beside the horse on the road. Amid the forest, Tajomaru captures his rival, and holding him with ropes and gag, leaves him sitting in a small clearing, incapable of any kind of movement. The bandit runs now toward the place they left the woman, who would now be an easily prey.
When he found her, told that her husband was bitten by a snake. With no veil, her face denoted a very intense suffering, and this display of a strong attachment for her husband, confesses Tajomaru, had aroused intense jealousy and hatred within his heart. Moved by these emotions, he changed his plans, having then decided to take her to the clearing where her husband stood shackled and, to humiliate him to the maximum, and to rape her violently in front of him.
And Tajomaru did it again exactly what his emotions commanded.

At this point, however, it supervenes then an unexpected deed: the raped wife relents to her rapist and takes an active and voluptuous role in that intercourse.

Still according to the bandit, the outcome of this story would not have been a murder if not for her reaction after the enjoyment when he saw that Tajomaru wanted to go out alone. She broke out in supplication, saying she wouldn't be able to remain alive this way, and that one man would have to die. Saying to the judge, haughty, he had no special liking in raping that female - 'similar to so many others' - he feels himself driven to the proposed fight as a to his pride. After freeing his rival, he gave him a sword. Fierce fight ensues, in which the husband seems to be the best of all swordsmen he ever faced, but in spite of this, was defeated and died by sword.
Finished the duel, he would not have seen the woman who probably fled terrified amid the fighting.
When the judge asked him if he had seen there a dagger, Tajomaru confirms and says it was a very valuable one, adding that leaving it amid that clearing was a "silly distraction."
At a first analysis, Tajomaru seems to have only a single reason to lie: pride. Being a dangerous and murderer bandit, wanted by the authorities for a long time, he would be punished with death anyway. It would be quite useless for him to deny any participation in this crime.
But would there be any reason for him to assume a false guilt?

6)The Raped Wife's Speech

After being raped she began crying in the middle of the clearing, until she looked at her tied husband. This stared at her with intense hatred and disdain: gazing at her with cold and terrifying eyes. She begged him to stop looking at her that way, several times in vain. She then implored him to kill her, but he hinted not to be even interested in that and kept with that hideous stare directed at her face, whose despair only grew. Until she grabbed the dagger and slowly drove it into his chest. Be she might not be sure about having killed him, because suddenly she fainted and, upon waking, her husband was in fact killed by a stab in the chest. She guesses that only her own hands may have hit his chest, even if she was already unconscious.
She finishes her version crying and reporting a suicidal attempt when she had, soon after all that, launched up to a river.

7) The Dead Man's Version (told through a medium)

"The dead do not talk," says the woodcutter, mocking this report.
"The dead do not lie," retorted the monk, who is narrating the medium's talk.
Then scene goes again to the woods.

After the rape, Tajomaru tried to convince the woman to run away with him, leaving her husband forever. He would do whatever she wanted to attain this, letting his wandering life to live as another humble city worker. In such moments, right after the rape, the dead man said he never had seen his wife so beautiful, so splendorous. And he was sure she would not give in to the pleas of the bandit who was asking her to follow to a new life. But quite disappointed he watched her accepting the invitation and asking that, before leaving, her raper should kill him cowardly.
Both men became extremely outraged by her proposal, and the rapist now turned against her. After mastering her body by force, the rapist asked her husband whether she should be at once killed. But the bound man didn't answer.
Through the medium's mouth is heard:
At that moment I forgave Tajomaru for all the bad done.
Thereafter, the wife ran away through the woods with Tajomaru behind and trying to reach her. Sometime later, he returned to the glade and loosened the ropes, saying words of comfort to the other man: "now, just care for life". But facing all described events, he chose to kill himself burying a dagger into his own heart. After some time, he still perceived someone's approaching his body and taking the weapon from his chest. Impossible to know who did it, since he was already dead and in the darkness from which this testimony now comes.

8) The Second Version of the Lumberjack

Under the Rashomon gate, the woodcutter insists that this latest report is also untrue, since there was no dagger, and some swords fight actually did happen between those men. But how could he know this with such certainty if only he said he had arrived well after the rape, violence and death? The walker challenges him to tell the truth, once it became clear he lied in his previous report.
Feeling then forced to admit his own lies to the police, whose reason had been to avoid being involved, that peasant tells them a new sequence of events: on reaching the woods, he had seen Tajomaru trying to convince the woman to flee with him, without success.
The husband would have still been tied by ropes, watching everything. Pondering the rapist's invitations, she replied that a woman is unable to utter a quick and clear answer to this kind of question. Suddenly, she took a sword to free her husband, thereafter, throwing herself to the ground, halfway between both men. The bandit said he was ready for the duel proposed by her. His rival, however, stood up and said that for such a kind of woman he would no longer fight, and that Tajomaru was free to take her with him if he wished. Feeling intensely humiliated then she instigated them to fight by calling both of cowards.
The sword fight, however, is told now as quite different from that described by Tajomaru. This latter trembles with fear, and both rivals flee from each other more actually fight. They rarely ever cross swords. Thus, the outcome is favorable to the raper by mere chance.
He keeps that there was no dagger at all.
How could he be so sure?

9) Final Scenes

Woodcutter, walker and monk are still together under the Rashomon, watching a downpour. Its noise might drown out the sound of the stories that told by human beings. Eventually, the wanderer says to the monk: humans are always in need to forget something, and for such they make up so many lies. And this same walker said in the opening scenes: "I do not mind lies, if they are interesting." Besides having said that he hates sermons. He turns now to the humble forest worker and says not to believe in his version of the crimes, because surely, he must have stolen the dagger. Angrily, the woodcutter says he is not a liar, when the drifter retorts that nobody warns you before lying. The accused then falls silent.
Soon after that dialogue, a newborn cry is heard coming too from under the Rashomon. The walker quickly goes after the kid. But the monk and the lumberjack exasperated at the sight that he had not gone to rescue the child, but quite on the contrary only to steal his amulet intended to be a symbol of protection. They vehemently reproach him, because that would be a heinous crime. The accused argues in its defense that the actual criminals were the parents of the baby, who had their enjoyment, and now throw the baby away.
"But think on how its parents suffered to make that decision," said the woodcutter.
Nothing however changes the mind of that wanderer, who makes himself the owner of the amulet, and flees those ruins.
The monk is now with the child in his arms, as if to protect it from the nonsensical world on which it has just arrived. The peasant tries then to firsthand the baby, causing the religious to react fearfully suddenly. But this gesture reveals itself as unjustified since that humble man was trying to keep the child with him.
"Having already six children at home, a mouth more would not make things harder".
Sorry for that abrupt attitude, the monk apologizes and gives him the baby. Thanks to the spontaneous and humble attitude of the woodcutter, he says he regains his faith in mankind.
The rain ceases, the peasant takes the baby with him, and the movie ends.

10) Comment and a Solution that Synthesizes the Whole Plot

Let's quote Nietzsche once more:

"Critique of Nihilism
The Nihilism as a psychological state has to supervene, at first, when after seeking a 'sense' in every event, a sense that is not there at all, those who look for such a meaning finally lose any courage. Here nihilism is to become aware of the great waste of strength, is the torment of 'all in vain', the uncertainty, the lack of condition for, in one way or another, recover strength or be able to still rest on something. It is shame before us, as if we had lied for too long ... That meaning could have been: either the achievement of a higher moral canon in every event, or of the moral order in this world, or the growth of love and harmony in the relationship between humans, or the nearing of a state of general happiness, or even the dissolution into a state of nothingness - a goal is always a sense. What is common to all these forms of representation is that something must be achieved through these processes - until one realizes that in this world of perpetual becoming nothing is achieved, no goal is reached ...                                                 (...)Nihilism as a psychological state happens a second time, when a totality is conceived, or a systematization, or even an organization that should concern every event, all that happens. (...). The underlying here is that man loses belief in his own worth, when he does not act through an infinite and valuable whole, that is to say, man conceives all such powerful entities just to be able to believe in his own value.
Nihilism as a psychological state also has a third and final form. Given these insights that nothing will be achieved through the eternal becoming, and that in this latter nothing larger acts, which the individual could soak completely, as an element of greater value. Thus, it stays the excuse to judge this whole becoming world as illusion, and invent another one which, beyond this here, one feels as if a real world. As soon as, however, man discovers that this latter world was built only from psychological needs, and that these in no way have any right to such deed, then emerges the final form of nihilism, which brings on the disbelief in a metaphysical world, - and also prohibits the belief in a true world. Under this view, the reality of eternal becoming is taken for the only reality, it forbids up all sorts of dodges by the worlds beyond, as well as to prohibit the false divinities - but no longer supports over this world, which no longer whether to deny ... - What happened, basically? The feeling of absence of values was achieved when it became clear that neither with the concept of "goal," nor with the concept of "unity" nor with the concept of "truth" might we construe the overall character of existence. By those ways, nothing is achieved, no goal is achieved; a lack of totalizing unity of multiplicity happens: the character of existence is not "true" is false ... We simply no longer have any reason to believe in a true world ... In short, the categories 'goal', 'unity', 'being', which we lay with value in the world, are again taken from us - and then the world seems worthless ... "                      Excerpt from 'The Will to Power', Der Wille zur Macht, a work of great importance for Heidegger, despite the acknowledged problems in the selection of its contents. Colli and Montinari, editing we use, dilute their texts in "Posthumous Fragments" [SW, v 13]

There seems to be no possible reconciliation between the various accounts of the events that followed the rape, and that culminated in that violent death. Before being mere collections of lies, those so different versions point to an undeniable human characteristic: we are incapable of disinterested glances to what happens around us, or even to ourselves. Nonsense to talk about any neutral prospects, disinterested points of view. Our passions always lead us, they are our engine, whose motto, yes this could be "Non Ducor, duco."

On the other hand, we can ask who might be looking for the true fact, the actual event:

1) The police-judicial authority, that we are led to believe, will kill Tajomaru, more than by this crime for its antecedents. No matter his role in the investigated death;

2) The viewer of the Kurosawa film, which tries during the course of the plot to decipher the puzzle, finding a unique sense that could connect all those contradictions, so reaching a unifying reality in Rashomon's plot. A not so simple deciphering which soon approaches becoming an impossible task. Would such an attempt really be justified?

The Only Solution?

"The dead do not lie," says the monk.

The reason to lie for Tajomaru was his explosive passion for the raped. Were if not for chance, which the Greeks said to be governed by Moirai goddesses, and that soft breeze at thug's face and no crime had occurred. He takes the blame for death to save the confessed killer, since they lived a very intense passion before, during and after the rape. The wife's report also had a certain degree of verisimilitude: having fainted, she could not see the suicide, so it would be possible that she had killed him, even though in an unconscious trance. Then, the maddened lovers flee through the woods, she ahead. Amid this whirlwind of emotions the desperate woman attempts suicide throwing herself into a river, but Tajomaru saves her from death.
Recall that the policeman who brags about such important capture did it at the edge of a river, where the raper was prostrate, without any condition to resist.
The monk, who is also a wanderer, shows up as hopeless because of the so disparate contents of the versions about the so dreadful event. Searching for a single meaning, true, true, but cannot find it for anything. Behind the multiplicity of human perspectives, there is no upper unit immanent. Who seeks, finds nothing. Finally loses forces and passes to want anything.
If only through a dead version, obtained through a mediumistic contact you can have access to the truth, devoid of any passion, any interest derived two conclusions:
1) The meaning of life does not belong in this world. There can be no sense knowable, nor deductible by reason, immanent to our empirical lives. This implies that it is impossible for mankind to know any definitive fact, but only partial, perspective truths. The absolute reality, if this expression might make any sense, is transcendent, inaccessible for human beings.
2) For those who do not believe in spirits, or in afterlife, reality will always be a just a kind of fiction. For believers, maybe the real might be accessible by trances, as in Rashomon.
The unchanging being of Parmenides, its absolute reality, can only be conceived through the perspective of Nothingness.
Another approach might be taking the dead man's version as not only illogical but also meaningless. This way would lead us to a single conclusion:
Only becoming exists, as Heraclitus wanted.