Course material

1. Outside Influence
Topic: Outside InfluenceOrder Descriptionthis is the outlineIntroductionThough
Kurosawa’ s films are most times depicted several centuries before they are filmed, he
chose to reinterpret history by collapsing the cultural trends of Japan in the 1400’ s with
the cultural shifts making profound alterations today. There are many examples of this
historical technique, and still keeping the culture they had in the past, but it can perhaps be
best exemplified by his appropriation of women and their freedom of speech and action.The
best example of this sense of equality is probably most evident in his (1950) film,
Rashomon.Rashomon is based on two stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a writer that
greatly precludes Kurosawa’ s era in Japanese culture.B. It is the exchange between several
stories, including that of a bandit, the victimized wife, and the wife’ s husband, considered a
samurai.C. The stories told by the bandit and the samurai is heroic and appealing to a
greater understanding of masculinityD. The wife’ s, however, is sharply contrasted the
former two’ s stories by being a largely emasculating story of cowardice and betrayal.Her
ability to tell this story, and for its ability to be told, indicates that Kurosawa attempted to
get a modern woman’ s perspective on the issue of masculinity and its dominance in
history.She essentially gets to ‘ tell a story’ as the other two do, but hers is remarkable for
its different gender centrality.Even in his films where the female characters are not given
much respect, such as his (1954) film Seven Samurai, there is still a message that Kurosawa
makes about the mistreatment of women and how these status cases should not be
tolerated in history.There are many, many plots that are happening concurrently in Seven
Samurai, and seemingly only one of them has a female character.A female farmer is in love
with one of the seven samurai, but their love must be kept a secret from the rest of the
people.Their love is portrayed as true and pure, and they would be able to live their lives
together, but for the inequalities of hierarchies as well as genders at the time of battle.B. The
rest of the stories are about honorable men, with the exception of Kikuchiyo, a sex-starved
Warrier that is willing to degrade himself for attention.His behavior is portrayed as immoral
and undesirable, meaning that his misogynistic action is not to be repeated by the audience
at home.I got comment like thisYour initial interest about how Kurosawa uses traditional
film characters and settings to show us more contemporary observations concerning class,
women, etc. is an interesting start. While I think this isn’ t the central message of
Rashomon, it remains an interesting observation. However, when you bring us to think
about these issues in Seven Samurai, the point is less apparent. Yes, the relationship
between the young samurai and the farm girl is problematic (primarily because of class

2. differences), we still don’ t see how this is evidence of the director telling us something
about the contemporary world. It doesn’ t seem like Kikuchiyo is overtly misogynistic, but
rather his character is portrayed as a lower class person trying to act with the swager of
higher class samurai, and the result of his antics are humorous. I might suggest you confine
your essay to a single film, Rashomon, and pursue this idea of how it embodies more
contemporary cultural issues such as the depiction of women, the noticn of an existential
truth (multiple truths dependent on point of view).I’ d like you to write it more about the
comment I got. and better focus on the movies I refrenced.