1. Sai Chongratanakul
Senior Seminar, Period 6
Rashomon’s Doubt
Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomonis a film about a man who got killed.
There are four testimonies stated by the lumberjack, the bandit, the wife of the
samurai, and the samurai, the victim of the murder. The interesting issue about the
plot of this film is that all of the testimonies state the story differently, and the crime
is left unsolved. However, Kurosawa attempted this unsolved mystery intentionally
to bring the audience’s attention not to solve who is the murder, but to bring up the
idea of how human’s perspective and action affect knowledge in a certain situation.
There are two respective views on truth and perception regarding to the film
Rashomon: Roger Ebert, and Errol Morris. Morris ultimately believed that truth is
objective and there is only one existed. Ebert points that truth is subjective and
varies from individual to individual. Eventhough both critics have their delightful
views, I personally believe that Ebert’s view on truth and reality havebetter
ingredients for justification, truth, belief, which gives better knowledge for the film
Rashomon though specific theory from perception: seeing and believing, and
selectivity of perception.
Morris’s statement is acceptable for the aspect of an absolute truth behind
each character’s perception or lies in the film that everyone can agree on one thing:

2. the samurai did get killed some way or another no matter who committed the
murder. He also quoted “ it’s human to lie. Most of the time we can’t even be honest
with ourselves.” For the Rashomon film, independent testimony theory, from
perception, one of the Ways of Knowing, can be relevant to this view since it is one
of the ways to distinguish appearance from the reality, which is to include other
witnesses in the testimony as well as the credibility of evidence is increased when
confirmed by others. However, there is no actual justification that someone told a
lie. Therefore, there is no proof in who is the murderer of this crime since each
person does not agree on what really happen, but what if nobody is lying? There is a
chance that every character is telling their own truth, since they lack information.
However, Ebert’s view makes more logical sense because his view on truth is
more subjective, paralleling to the differing witnesses which is relating to the theory
of seeing and believing, and the limitations of second-hand knowledge. The theory
of seeing and believing states that since our beliefs and expectations can affect the
way people see things. This theory can apply to how the bandit saw the woman’s
strength and fear; therefore he believes by her action that she is scared of her
husband and wants the bandit to kill him. On the other hand, the wife claims that
she cries and blames herself because she cheats on her husband with the bandit.
This illustrates that two testimonies have different truths based on what they see
and what they believe.

3. In addition, Ebert also argues that every person has a different truth because
they have lack of information. The theory of selectivity of perception best fits his
argument. The theory of selectivity of perception relatively states that human’s
senses are selective. Even though we think that we are aware of everything that is
happening, we only notice some of the things and overlook others, depending on the
main focal subject. According to the film, all of the testimonies tell the story
differently since they only know some pieces of the whole story and they only focus
on the specific senses. This depicts that truth is subjective and no one can deny it
because even our sense is subjective.
In conclusion, although Morris’s idea has a good point that there is only one
absolute truth, it is undeniable to agree that truth is subjective which can adapt to
Ebert’s statement about relative truth through the theories of seeing and believing
and selectivity of perception. Based on the film Roshomon, Ebert’s view on truth can
be easily identified throughout the whole film, as each character perceives the
murder situation differently.
Lagemaat, Richard van de. Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma.N.p.:
Cambridge University Press, 2008. Print.