1. Makoto Abe
Rashomon Essay
Perception is our awareness of things through the five senses; sight, sound, touch,
taste and smell. The concept of perception can be applied to the movie Rashomon.
Rashomon a movie directed by Akira Kurosawa; is a movie about the different perspectives
on how a samurai was killed. The four different perspectives are from a bandit, a samurai, a
samurai’s wife, and a woodcutter who witnessed the crime scene. There are two main
thesis’s concerning the movie Rashmon. The first thesis by Roger Ebert is that we should
always be critical of what we are thinking because reality is subjective and truth is relative
which is based on human interpretation. The second thesis by Errol Morris is that truth and
reality are independent of people ergo and they are both absolute and objective. To a
greatest extent Morris’s view on truth and reality, are independent from peoples ergo and
they are both absolute and objective is more subjective, applies more to the movie
Rashomon.
To a small extent, Ebert’s view on truth and reality applies to the movie Rashomon
because the various testaments of the four witnesses clearly support Ebert’s view on truth
and reality. In the movie there were four testaments from four suspects of the murder,
however, throughout the movie it is unclear who has really done it and even at the very end
of the movie the audience does not really know who killed the samurai. Even at the end of
the movie the murderer is unknown which clearly illustrates the possibility of several truths
according to the witnesses. Ebert agreed that this movie has, “no solution” and that the
flashbacks presented in the movie simply reflect a, “point of view” (Ebert) and not
necessarily the truth. Since people tend to lie about what they see for their motives, truth

2. cannot be determined by these points of view. Despite this, the director has made the
audiences see the testimonies from a judge’s point of view which clearly indicates that the
director wants the audiences to judge who is the murderer, which shows that there is only
one single truth.
Morris’s view on truth clearly reflects the movie Rashomon because the way the
Akira Kurosawa directs the movie clearly illustrates that there is truth but subjective truth.
Rashomon is, “about how everybody sees the world differently. But the claim that
everybody sees the world differently is not a claim that there’s no reality”. So unlike Ebert’s
view on truth and reality, there is a solution because not all the testimonies could have
occurred. Also Morris’s view clearly refers to the common-sense realism theorem which
means that there is only one absolute truth. There has to be only one killer and one weapon
according to the testimonies given. However, all of the testimonies are different so not all
the testimonies can be true. The director of the movie made the audiences the judges of the
crime which clearly shows that the director wants us to come to the conclusion to who the
murderer is.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the others did not believe in the freed man’s words of
reality because they could only accept their realities inside their caves. This theory seems to
match up with the movie, Rashomon. All characters have their own testimonies on the
events from the murder. However it seems like all the suspects do not accept the other’s
reality and would only believe in their reality. In the movie Rashomon, it is clear that even
though the woodcutter has listened to all the different testimonies, he would not accept
any of them except his reality. Also when the woodcutter was talking to the man of the
various testimonies under the shelter from the rain, the man had claimed that his reality too

3. may be false as well even though he claims it as the truth. This applies to Morris’s view on
truth about how everyone have their own truths and that those truths are their very own
reality.
In conclusion, to a greatest extent Morris’s view on how truth and reality is
independent of people ergo and they are both absolute and objective. In the movie,
Rashomon the murderer is not directly pointed out the director makes it clear that one
perspective must be true over the other. Also the fact that Ebert makes a point in how
motive may alter a person’s perspective cannot be applied into the movie Rashomon
because according to Morris, motive cannot be taken as evidence. Also the fact that people
will understand other’s motives cannot be justified because motive too as well as
perspective can be lied about and altered.