Crop Rotation - 008 - Akutagawa, Kurosawa - Rashomon [content warning]

Akira Kurosawa: Rashomon

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa: Rashomon, In a Grove

Content Warning: discussion of sexual assault

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Let us pause and life splashes and count as many too. Time's come again. Times come again.

SPEAKER_05 0:47

Welcome to Crop Rotation, a literature, theology, and philosophy discussion podcast. A good farmer doesn't grow the same thing every year, and for the soil to thrive, there needs to be variety. We're a group of friends who found that we missed the life of the mind that we were able to live together when we were at St. John's College in Annapolis two decades ago. And this podcast is an opportunity to explore and discuss works of art and of intellect that we've each discovered in the intervening years. So before each of the meetings, one of us gives the group an assignment. This leader is also responsible for asking an opening question to begin the discussion. And this meeting's leader is Dwight.

SPEAKER_06 1:28

Hey, so for this meeting, we read the short story Rashomon and the short story In a Grove, and then we watched the film by Kurosawa Rashomon. So the summary of these works are Rashomon is a assistant samurai, goes to the gate of Rashomon, and he ponders if he is going to starve or become a thief. He then meets a lady and decides that he will become a thief and begins by stealing everything she has and leaving. In a Grove is a series of testimonies from people in a trial about a murder, and then the movie Rashomon sort of takes those testimonies and dramatizes them out and adds some stuff to it. Um, and I thought to go through and discuss each work individually for a short period of time, you know, like four or five minutes each, not talking about you know, similarities between them or this or that, just each one individually, and then opening it up. Because I think just it's really easy to jump to that and out of the story itself. So if that would be interesting to y'all, that would be great. But my opening question is if you go to the short story Rashomon, it towards it's about a third of the way through. Let me see, in the version I sent y'all, it is the end of the sixth paragraph, beginning of the seventh. I'll just read the section that I'm talking about. His mind, after making the same detour time and time again, came finally to the conclusion that he would be a thief. But doubts returned many times. Though determined that he had no choice, he was still unable to muster enough courage to justify the conclusion that he must become a thief. So the question from that is have you, in looking back on your life, noticed times that are like that where you conclude something and then later find that it isn't quite concluded?

SPEAKER_04 4:10

I mean, when have I concluded something without that happening?

SPEAKER_05 4:15

Okay. I was gonna say that's the most outrageous question anyone's ever asked me. I've never pulled it off, but No, yeah. Sir Robert is probably the exception. He probably makes decisions to that to them that way.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

But I um I don't draw a lot of conclusions like that, I don't think. Probably because I've been uh plenty burned.

SPEAKER_05 4:43

Okay, so I think I may have co-opted the framing and made it too narrow, because I'm talking about aspirationally. Um what the author may be describing as happening in this moment is that he makes up his mind and has the sensation of feeling fully settled about it. And for those kinds of things, yes, that I I have, I do believe I have sense that I had come to a place of settledness and then found, to my surprise, that my values were elsewhere in some way. And typically that's because I think I'm immune to something that I'm not. There's something that still has some power over me that I think that by coming to a place of settledness, I've protected myself and made myself study. But in reality, I have turned my attention away only to then be influenced more than in a way that I thought I was intractable to.

SPEAKER_04 5:52

All of my most of my thoughts about this assignment are about the film. And also most of them are about agency. So this is a good question about agency.

SPEAKER_06 6:08

If you'll remember when I assigned this age, and I didn't make sure we didn't forget about this story.

SPEAKER_04 6:14

I didn't forget about this story. I read it a number of times. Okay, okay. I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_05 6:22

So from Matthew, from the perspective of the story, agency, this man is questioning am I going to do a thing that, you know, for a Japanese person, the fact that there's a clutch pedal on the car is irrelevant. You're born into a track, that's it. You don't change. So the very premise of this to a Japanese person is already wild. You know, the idea of just up and choosing to change. So agency and identity for a Japanese person. I know I'm saying you're this man is a samurai, and he's trying to choose to be something else. And I'm saying which Westerners don't get it.

SPEAKER_06 7:04

What is a servant of is that like a squire? Is that someone who will eventually become a samurai?

SPEAKER_04 7:10

I was confused about that because my thing said it was a servant of a samurai, but then he's got a sword, and it's like, brother, you if you have if you still have the sword, you don't need to starve.

SPEAKER_05 7:23

Sell your sword. But you gotta think here, that's the last thing of agency that he has. If he sells it for a meal, that's the point, is that he has now collapsed into poverty. You either keep the sword and kill with it, or just go ahead and kill yourself.

SPEAKER_04 7:39

Well, I mean, a sword is like the value of a luxury car. You know, it's more than one meal. It's probably not enough to set yourself up in business, but maybe I don't know. I don't know. Well, no, but I think I had a I had a slightly different reading of this, Josh. He has his determination that he has no choice is that he has dis what he's decided and he's now doubting, is that his locus of control is actually outside of himself. He actually doesn't have any agency. He has to become a thief. It's not that he's trying to use his agency to convert himself to a thief, it's that it seems like he's at a point where he's lost all agency and he must become a thief. And then he has his doubts about that are actually like his conscience and other aspects of his personality that demand that he does have agency. He doesn't have to do the bad thing.

SPEAKER_05 8:47

I think I see struggle though. There's process, right? If this isn't just a revelation, and he goes back later and realizes that his mind is not fully made up, right? It takes work, it's horcruxes take evil to make, and he's doing something to himself. I think the process of the story in the Harry Potter verse or that bad kind of magic, you make like a lich, you make a phylactery that lets you live forever. But in order to make the thing, you have to do something evil to make it, right? This evil fruit requires an evil act to bear. And he is trying to go from being a man of honor to choosing the identity of a beggar and a thief, because he's gonna have to hold that identity up to his as like a patch to hold in where he's gonna take this huge wound where he's gonna lose the identity of being a samurai. There's still gonna be work there. It's not just a fate is making him this. Oh, look, it's just what I am. That's how he's articulating it. That's how he's using words, I think, to try to escape the deep, absolute gut-ripping loss of self that he's going through.

SPEAKER_06 10:01

But do you think there's more it's not?

SPEAKER_05 10:03

Maybe I'm over-ascribing his level of coherence of his identity as a samurai and his honor. You know, maybe I'm giving him too much credit. Just because that live there doesn't know I know how intensely he is a character, right? So, what to what do you see that? Do you see cues that would indicate to you how deeply he's grieving and going through loss versus simply kind of processing the reality that he's going through and kind of getting it out of his head that he's a samurai? To what degree is it one or the other?

SPEAKER_06 10:31

Yeah, I don't know. There is no I was just gonna say there is another point a little bit further along, about halfway through, that he the end of a paragraph, uh, I'm not sure how many down, he says he's basically noticing that the lady is pulling hair out of the corpse's heads. And he says, Of course, it never entered his mind that a little while ago he had thought of becoming a thief. So he looks at the lady and decides that pulling hair from the dead is an unpardonable crime. And he there is no thought in his mind that he was about to become a thief just a little while ago. And then towards the end, right at the end, it's basically no longer did he wonder whether he would starve to death or become a thief. Starvation was so far from his mind, it was the last thing he that would have entered it, and then he steals her clothes and goes away.

SPEAKER_05 11:33

So he's won. He's put a lot of distance between himself and starvation. And you say that that's winning? Well, he's made himself the kind of thing that is not weak and going to die, right? Because the battle is won in the mind first and then without, right? And that's what he's trying to do. He's trying to apply what he knows about how to go through life, learning from a samurai who's somebody who's very tough. And you if you're gonna be a thief, then you gotta get it in your mind and get it right and just be a thief and go, you know, do that, survive. But there's pride, right? That it as long as you do it with all your mind, you can still be proud about it. I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I mean, that seems to be true of the sensibility.

SPEAKER_04 12:20

It's a very strange, it's a very strange thing that happens. So she says, if she knew of the corpse that I had to do this in order to live, she probably wouldn't care.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 12:35

And then he gets this new courage or thoughtlessness, which is a different kind of courage. It says, Starvation was so far from his mind that it was the last thing that would have entered it. He says, Are you sure? he asks in a mocking tone. Then it's right if I rob you, I'd starve if I didn't. Okay, thanks, narrator, for telling us that starvation is the furthest thing from his mind that he would ever think of. And then his next utterance is that he would starve if he doesn't rob her.

SPEAKER_06 13:10

Well, so that that is sort of a funny thing, except I think the narrator is telling you that actually starving is the furthest m thing from his mind.

SPEAKER_04 13:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 13:21

He's thinking about starving. Right. And he's not going.

SPEAKER_05 13:26

Yeah, he's Oh, interesting. Okay. He's still desperate. Yeah. Okay. Well, that bridge of it's not on his mind, he's doing it to not starve, right? That bridge.

SPEAKER_04 13:39

Like before he was he was dwelling on the possibility of his own starvation, trying to find a way out of it besides thieving, not able to, trying to convince himself to become a thief. And then now all he cares about is what excuse can I make to commit this act of robbery?

SPEAKER_06 14:00

Why does he need an excuse? You know, he's still talking to the lady. Go ahead. Well, he's still talking to her, he's not just doing it. But yeah, go ahead. Go. He seems like Saul.

SPEAKER_05 14:11

He seems like Saul refusing to wait for Samuel. You know, this guy at his coronation gets told, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God will be with you. But he cannot control himself, he can't wait. He has this idea in his head that because he's got this mandate, because he's got this urgency, that his mindset makes reality. And so because Saul is the king and he's the guy who's gotta get it done, well, you just get you gotta get it done. You gotta get the job done. For this guy, it seems to be survival, it seems to be not starving. Paul Saul thinks that he's starving and he's so hungry to get the answer, he acts impulsively. Maybe that's the over literal true line.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

He is looking for justification, right? He says in particular, when she says I pull out I pull the hair, I pull out the hair to make a wig, his answer banished all unknown from their encounter and brought disappointment. Suddenly she was only a trembling old woman there at his feet. A ghoul no longer.

SPEAKER_06 15:32

It's almost like he wanted to climb up the stairs and fight something.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Yeah, I mean, that's how he would justify, right? Like a cold contempt seized him. Fear left his heart, and his former hatred entered. The feelings must have been sensed by the other creature, blah blah blah. And he's looking for I don't think that the starvation is sufficient justification for it. I think he knows it's not real. He's real in this he's not gonna starve like in the next few days or something, right? And he's looking for something that's like that justifies not stealing, but this steal, right? By the way, she's doing the same thing, I think, where she explains to fish monger, the girl who sells snakes, and her argument about that was where was it? Um these people deserve it anyway. She's saying, Yeah, it is a horrible thing I'm doing. Sure. Fine. She was a horrible person, which what she did couldn't be wrong because if she hadn't, she would have starved to death. There was no other choice. If she knew I had to do this in order to live, she wouldn't probably wouldn't care. Like all of them are using the same justification. He's got this really interesting one where I by the way, I don't know how close the hag woman is to starvation or the fish selling, snake-selling girl. He doesn't seem close to it, and he's looking, it looks to me, for a different justification, a more immediate one.

SPEAKER_04 17:12

Yeah, he just got discharged. So he probably had breakfast and lunch at work. Yeah. And he's he's flipping out and becoming a thief before he's even had one 24-hour period of not being able to find his next meal.

SPEAKER_06 17:33

The writing's on the wall a little bit though, right? Because Kyoto's suffering. This used, I think, used to be a grand gate and it's in ruins. There've been years of problems, right? Earthquakes and fires and wars. So, like, may yeah, sure, maybe he's not immediately hungry, but I think he knows that there's no, you know, he lost his job and he's way down the list. There's a ton of people out there who need jobs, and there's no magical stock market that's gonna bounce back and cause the you know, economy to rebound really quickly.

SPEAKER_04 18:20

Yeah, he might be correct that actually it is a choice between thieving and starving.

SPEAKER_05 18:26

But hasn't he gotten there by this magical thinking of just detour? Like he's lost in the incoherent imaginings of what might happen, and then just he can't imagine anything else. If he decided to steal his mind after making the same detour time and again, came finally to the conclusion that he would be a thief, but doubts returned many times. Making the same detour time and again came finally. That's a lot of heavy lifting for two words. Coming to a thought and then finding that it's the only thought that you can get to seems to be his definition for coherent emergence of identity. If I think a thought a bunch of times and I can't think anything else, what else am I gonna be?

SPEAKER_06 19:17

Yeah, I think it's very easy. You can project a lot of different things into those words. You can project a lazy teenager who's upset that mom is making him clean his room and he thinks real hard for 20 seconds and just determines that he hates everything about life. Or you can project a wise, youngish but worldly wise samurai who spent a long time, you know, maybe he was sitting there all day and uh did make the same detour time and time again, many, many times, and not just a few times. Or, you know, it yeah, I think it's interesting how you can read it different ways.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Also, he's got a kimono, don't know the quality of that, and a sword. Like, he's not immediately gonna die. Like if he were to change his profession and go be a ditch digger because it's the Great Kyoto Depression, right? That might not go anywhere for him, or he could maybe walk to another city. I don't know what the logistics of all that are, governmentally and all that. But he does have something of value. He he has the means to be a thief, which is really interesting. Unlike the old Hagwoman stealing from the dead, right? But he has the means to steal from the living. He has a sword and talent. I have a certain amount of sympathy for his swirling, but yeah, there's some Home Depot parking lot that he can go to.

SPEAKER_04 21:03

There's something, there's some place where the peasants go to get work. He hasn't even gone there to wait around and see if someone will hire him for something for a day.

SPEAKER_05 21:13

So are you sure? Because the passage is explicitly saying the opposite of both of you two. He had little choice of means, whether fair or foul, because of his helpless circumstances. If he chose honest means, he would undoubtedly starve to but undoubtedly, there you go. We're already into this language of epistemologically, it's tied to what he can imagine and believes is true. You guys are asserting this whole narrative framing as though it's authoritative narration is kind of betraying the fact that he in his heart is just starting from prejudice and weakness.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

This isn't a privileged omniscient perspective. This is a close third person kind of deal where we're seeing the inner workings of him, not like some great absolute perspective. I I think so. Everything that's happening here is in his mind. If he chose honest means he would undoubtedly starve to death. Let me tell a quick story. Um, so I'm not given to anxiety dispositionally. But uh I think Josh, I told you this story. A little over a year ago, I had uh life event that in that induced some anxiety in me. So here's some experience of that anxiety, right? The anxiety part's really interesting to me. I when I say I'm not given to anxiety, by the way, this is partially for y'all, but anybody listening. I don't know that I had experienced anxiety prior to this uh life event. It was very strange. I didn't like it. It was an unpleasant sensation. But being known if it's probably true. It really was unpleasant. So let me tell you a particular story that was very helpful to me for understanding people who have anxiety a lot. Which, by the way, in my experience, and the reason I'm sympathetic is I have a wife and two daughters, and they seem far more prone to it than me or my sons. But anyway, so I had just done some landscaping work. This true story, and I think this is really helpful for this guy's frame of mind. He seems anxiety prone. Uh, I just done a little bit of landscaping, had some dirt delivered, and was flattening it out, right? And I didn't know what I was doing. It was the first time I'd ever done it. And that was right before the anxiety-inducing event. And I had done some work on it, not very well. I hadn't leveled it properly because I didn't know how to do it. Right. Normally that wouldn't bother me at all. But in my stress and distress, I had found myself having some sleepless nights, waking up and, you know, running through things in my mind. And one of the things I ran through in my mind was how uneven the dirt was. I I had brought quite a bit of dirt. It was several tons to like level out the front lawn. And it was how uneven it was. So what I did is I made a plan in my mind, this one like Friday night or something. I made a plan for how I was going to fix how uneven it was. And it was about 2 a.m. that I had woken up and I thought and I pictured the yard as accurately as I could and the slope of the mounds and how much work I had to do. And I estimated that the piles of the dirt that I had to level were probably in the neighborhood of 27, 25 degree slope, like kind of steep, these mounds that I would have to level out. So far, so good. Yep. So I spent probably an hour that night thinking through what was going to be required of the labor, what was I gonna have to do? How was I gonna get it done in time for these other things to go on that would be impacted? It's just dirt in your yard, right? I needed to put grass seed, but I don't want to, you can't, whatever. So I spent like an hour rehearsing. I thought really like, okay, so I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. Finally, I fell asleep doing some worrying and some prayer. And I got up, I woke up again at 5:30 or something. It was light out. And so I got up and was doing a few things, and then I went out to go make sure my plan for how I could get this taken care of as quickly as possible worked. And probably it was like a five-degree at most slope, not like 25. And it was really interesting because I'm good at estimating those things. Like that I have that's a skill I have. And the worry had completely distorted my perceptions, actually distorted my perceptions. The fear, anxiety, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 25:45

Your memory of something that you had visually seen in the daylight.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Yeah, in the daylight and in the day, and I had worked most of the day on it. Like I knew what was happening. I wasn't a glance, it was I knew it. And as a matter of fact, when I went out there and saw it, I was surprised for two reasons. One is that the slope wasn't what I thought, and two is that it was exactly how I remembered it. It was a really weird dissonance, right? Like my memory, I had a distortion lens and it was making everything horrible. Like it was a terrible, it's terrible way to live, right? Like if somebody's stuck in that. Anyway, so my point is one, I have sympathy for the guy. He's in a genuinely dire situation, the guy who's been fired. He's in a genuinely dire situation. Worse, he is suffering from what I now understand to be a kind of psychotic state that has a very specific name. It's being afraid. Fear is psychosis-inducing. I I have seen it in people, have not understood what was happening. It's where you look at the world and you start making crazy decisions and thinking that the world is different than it is, and there's the prowling person behind you, blah blah blah, all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 27:10

This is this is in the Bible when like Joshua sends those guys to spy out all the land. And some of them come back and they're like, And out of the 12. We were as small as grasshoppers next to them, and the other guys come back and they're like, It's just some normal dudes, we can take them.

SPEAKER_05 27:27

Well, Joshua and Caleb saw the same size dudes and said, uh, yeah, and we have God on our side, so it'll be okay. Let's go get those giants. So yeah. I yeah, Joshua and Caleb are part of the report. Well, Joshua and Caleb are part of the same report, they're part of the same spy team. They saw the same size giants as the guys that were scared. It wasn't that they saw smaller guys, it was that they said, God will be with us.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

But anyway, I read it similarly to Josh on this.

SPEAKER_06 27:58

However, I don't think it matters for this point that the two who were not afraid didn't see it as um a they wouldn't, if they were reporting about your landscaping thing, they wouldn't have led with there's a 25% grade. They would have said led with we can do this.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Yeah. And I have found that as I've talked to people, again, not being one who myself is prone to fear and anxiety, generally speaking, notwithstanding the recent stuff I had to deal with, I have found that it is a kind of crazy, it has always seemed super weird to me when people are genuinely afraid. I and I don't mean things like, you know, the sort of shock or panic of your car steering, and you know, suddenly you have to regain control because you skipped or something. I'm talking about like situational, you're actually able to think through things. I the thinking is really strange and off. And he's just I think describing it pretty well here. The author, I can't remember his name. And and so anyway, my point is I have sympathy for the guy. I think he's got a kind of crazy. It's easy to make him ridiculous. And I have made people who are afraid out to be ridiculous before, because it is ridiculous, in one way of looking at it. But there is a compassionate way to look at it that previously I would have said, no, well, let me say it this way: if you're empathetic, which I think is a moral vice, then you would enter into the fear with them, and both of you would die and be in a terrible state. However, if you're compassionate, which is a moral virtue, you will let yourself suffer with them with one foot in reality. And I've done both of those before. And I have a compassion for the guy, but also he ends up choosing poorly. Okay, that was my very long discourse.

SPEAKER_05 30:00

Yeah, that's good. We're talking about the absurd or may making ridiculous. He's going through a very sincere process of going through sentiment of like righteous anger over the old woman. So there's some indignance, right? There's still some part of him that is honor bound, that is flaring up. So then, you know, this it feels like this he's moving into sorrow. He's grieving, he's letting go of. So I think he even knows that he's doing something, whatever. But then once he's done, I think it's so shameful he has to turn away. Like the moment you let, you know, it's like something terrible that comes out your backside, you know, you flush it, done. Like it's something like that. Like it's awful. And so you if it's done, it's done. And you turn and turn away, and there's energy there.

SPEAKER_06 30:55

That's why it's a little interesting that the story actually talks about a courage. Um, this is the last real long paragraph. As he listened, a certain courage was born in his heart, the courage which he had not had when he sat under the gate a little while ago. So he had some sort of courage before. He has a new courage, a strange power was driving him in the opposite direction of the courage which he had when he had seized the old woman, thinking she was a possibly a demon or something. No longer did he wonder whether and that's when he, you know, starvation leaves his mind. So it's it's interesting. So Robert brought up fear and also the gaze thing.

SPEAKER_05 31:35

Sir Robert mentioned the gaze, how there's this moment of his gaze shifting, and then she goes from being a hag to pathetic. Um, that gaze I thought came up really powerfully in our Kurosawa watch. And I am curious to see how you guys saw that in this next.

SPEAKER_06 31:55

We are going to move on to the short story, not the Kurosawa Watch.

SPEAKER_05 32:01

I'm curious how you guys see it in in the grove.

SPEAKER_06 32:04

Yeah. So in a grove, this is almost like opening up a case file. Yeah. It's just the testimonies of the people. And I think what's really interesting here is I don't know how much I think I've probably watched the most sports of us between here, between the four of us, but over the last yeah, over the last 20 years or so, one thing that has happened in sports and specifically in football, but across all the sports, is they have added more and more cameras on the field. So that and the reason it's especially pertinent to football is because football is a sport where a play happens and then it stops. And so when you're watching it, the television program fills out the space between the plays with talk about what happened, and they will show you nine million angles of what just happened. And then the next play will happen. These plays would happen, and you'd be like, absolutely certain, man, if my player had just tried a little bit harder, he totally could have caught that ball, and then we would have won the game. And then what hat what I've learned is actually they'll show that exact same play from 90 degrees oppose, and I have I haven't seen that play, but you know, other plays, I'll be like, oh man, if my guy had tried a little harder now, I'll see that. And then they'll show the same play from 90 degrees oppose, and he was actually like 12 feet away from the ball, where from one angle it looked like you know it was just a few inches away from him from the other angle. It's clear that oh, the reason he wasn't looking like he tried hard is because there was no way he was going to catch it. So there's that level, and then another level, still going with the football. If I'm supporting one team, you're supporting another team, we'll watch it and we'll watch it from all these angles, and each of us will have a different opinion of what happened in that play, and it will be nearly entirely driven by who we're rooting for.

SPEAKER_05 34:43

I mean, it doesn't help that you're gonna pick one person out of the field and shape the story around that one person, and you're already off to such a diverse set of story framings, but keep going, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 34:56

Yeah. And so I I think there's uh an interesting thing there where we I think 20 years ago, if you said, Oh, in the future we're gonna have a camera that's on these wires and it can get anywhere on the field, and we're gonna have pylon cameras that'll show you. I think people would be like, Oh, that we're never gonna have another issue with just weird rules stuff. And actually, what has happened is we have all those same issues. It does, it does fix some, some are cleared up, but it does not fix all of them. And maybe even some appear because of it.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

I don't know for sure about that, but uh so that was my little talk about multiple viewpoints. When I was excuse me, when I was reading through this, I have this, y'all know this, but I have this bias where I don't I don't actually do a good job of of modeling people's motives. And that's mostly because I don't, it doesn't ever occur to me to do it. And so I just take things at face value by default. Yeah, I almost never think, why is this person saying this or doing this? I just go, here's something. So one of the things I do when I like read a poem or whatever is I'll tend to try to, I'll assume it's earnest. I told you all this in the car that time, Dwight and Josh. I'll assume it's earnest, and then I'll try to create a slice of life of a real person who would have that earnest perspective and then sympathize with them. That's more or less how I engage art. Right. One of the things I had in this particular case, Dwight, about the camera perspectives is I tried to I didn't do this on purpose. I found myself trying to see if there was a truth that made all of them telling the truth and the contradictory or conflicting parts to be distortions of perspective. The most obvious of those for me is the girl, the wife, claiming she killed her husband, but two of the accounts have her asking uh what's his name, Takehiko to kill the husband.

SPEAKER_04 37:15

Yeah, the robber.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

Which, from her perspective, if she were uh in some kind of hysterical state or something, she could take to be her doing it. Right? Like I hadn't thought of that, yeah. I'm not sure if that's happening here. I'm just saying that's how I kind of synthesized these because I was thinking of them. I didn't know this until you said it. I was thinking of them like cameras. Like, you know, I was I was almost granting them the truth of it and trying to figure out how does that how to make a single picture out of these perspectives.

SPEAKER_06 37:45

Yeah, I tried to do a similar thing and was not particularly successful. So that that's helpful.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Some of it I didn't do that, I didn't get all the details resolved, but there were some things where I was like, okay, I could see something, something. Again, I didn't know that I was doing that. I didn't even check my own motives.

SPEAKER_05 38:02

And that was the initial work of reading a dossier, right? Is to take in the information and let your brain immediately tell you anything that it can just find that is obvious, not obvious, inferential connection. Uh yeah. And also in this case, what you're doing is saying, can coherence emerge? That's kind of the first natural gestalt step of reading a bunch of testimonies and saying, are these people telling the truth? Does anything coherent emerge?

SPEAKER_04 38:37

So I realized this from watching the film, but it is true of the story as well, which is each of the three primary witnesses tells a story in which they make the choice that leads to the man's death. And brilliant. Good insight. Wait, wait for it. And each of them asserts an emotional reason why somebody else made them do it. So the wife says that she killed him with her dagger because he was looking at her with disgust. The robber says that he would have run away, except that she was looking at she looked at him and she was so beautiful that he had to fight a duel with the husband. The husband says that the medium? Through the medium, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 39:46

I think in the story the lady pulls the robber back. I don't think he but I'm getting him confused.

SPEAKER_04 39:55

It is her betrayal of him that like makes him kill himself. Something like that. I think in the story it's the least obvious with the murdered man. So the little bit of homework too.

SPEAKER_06 40:11

Okay. Go ahead. I didn't want to do this, but in the film, I I do remember she does not claim that she killed him. She faints and she wakes up and he was killed.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 40:25

Maybe there was a fugue state and she did it, but she does not claim that she killed him in the film. She does claim it in the short story.

SPEAKER_05 40:34

But she does have the veracity of the mendacity of the witness who stole the dagger. His okay, let's not separate. That's separate. She can't bring him in.

SPEAKER_04 40:45

He's not in the story.

SPEAKER_05 40:47

Yeah, I know. Sorry. I'm not in the book, you know. So, in terms of the story, three people enter the grove. The Tojumaru lures the samurai into the grove. The samurai gets overwhelmed and tied to a cedar tree. That's in all three stories.

SPEAKER_06 41:06

Yeah, they all start at the girl entering the grove after that initial.

SPEAKER_05 41:13

The assault happens, and then Tojimaru leaves the grove alive. Masako leaves the grove alive, and the samurai stays in the grove dead. Those are the only facts that all of them agree on.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Fact. That's not the right word. There's one element that they all three have, that they all three have very distinctly differently, which is each one gives his or her own perspective of the woman, of the wife. And they're different. So I just want to so the robber one is interesting because he I forgot what the word is that he uses Bhagavita or something book. Bodhisattva. Uh Bodhisattva.

SPEAKER_04 42:03

Which is Bodhisattva.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Somebody has achieved enlightenment but has decided not to ascend, right? In order to help, often in order to help or whatever. So he's basically saying an angel. She looked like an angel. Yeah is a way we can possibly call that. But it's interesting, right? Because that actually comes up a couple of times how she's done it. And then she acts these ways that are not really about that. But anyway, that's the robber's perspective of her in one tale. In her telling, her husband's perspective of her, that's how she frames it, is disgust and loathing. But in the husband's telling, his perspective of her is sympathetic, like is you know compassionate. And I don't know what exactly to do with that, but there was a really striking, to me at least, um, element that they all made a point of like characterizing her, which they didn't do of the others. Like there's not like a consistent thing in the others. They all made a point of characterizing her in a way, including her. But when she characterized herself, she characterized herself through a man's eyes. I don't know exactly what to do with that, but I it was really striking to me.

SPEAKER_04 43:15

There's an interesting thing like that in the film, which I will mention when we talk about the film.

SPEAKER_05 43:20

So yeah. Yeah. So without talking about the film, just from a cultural perspective, there's this expectation that your wife is loyal to you, right? And so the fact that in the story you've got a sympathetic husband and a wife who, from her perspective, is bitter and she sees disdain is a deep betrayal of these bounds that make you feel like your society has the ability to protect you because it's resilient, you know, like your retirement being in stocks.

SPEAKER_06 43:54

I think there's a good chance that her this is her account. of what she thought what her internal life was like after the this all happened. I I wonder if she thought that then they were new newly ish wed. They were heading out into the big world. There's a good chance that she was happy riding on that horse up until the grove.

SPEAKER_05 44:27

Well okay so are if we were women would we have pointed out a long time ago yeah you might be a little hacked off if your husband ditched you in the woods to maybe make a buck off of some swords buried that a bandit told him were across the ridge. You might think that might you know engender some marital conflict.

unknown 44:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 44:47

I mean she I would feel she was if I were the woman excited about the opportunity until she found out what the opportunity actually was also she was certainly not adequately protected by her armed protector who was a good sword fighter.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

According to the thief according yeah the thief has no reason okay maybe a little bit because he killed him but but the thief is saying like the thief got the opportunity to say no one has ever crossed sword with me 20 times.

SPEAKER_06 45:19

So this guy was real good.

SPEAKER_00 45:21

I mean not even more he was really good and I still killed him right yes okay so the thief does have motivation yeah that's an interesting thing okay I hadn't I hadn't noticed that.

SPEAKER_05 45:31

So we cross swords 23 times I'm trying to think of what that indicates what how long of a duel that is you know that's a thing that amongst professional sword fighters that's a metric right if you tell people who you killed and how many blows you did it in that's a deep level of information.

SPEAKER_04 45:54

So I'm just trying to think of what that means it's traditional in like Japanese literature and like martial culture to count the number of like passes.

SPEAKER_05 46:09

It's almost like um night jousting yeah oh I know what it means at a literal level yeah yeah I know what it means at a literal level I mean what is he trying to assert about the ratio between his skill and his enemy's skill and how long it took to because the if you start tacking on more blows you you see what I I don't know the number the values distort in weird ways.

SPEAKER_06 46:36

It's uh it's 23 at all uh he's just boasting I mean so there's not like a not that it ends numerology.

SPEAKER_04 46:46

Yeah it's like it was a big fight took a long time because I'm super great as a swordsman and he was super great as well but just not as good as me.

SPEAKER_05 46:55

Yeah. Well yeah 23 blows means you probably clashed and had one or two strikes or blow deflections and separated so that's like 10 engagements. So he's saying eight nine ten times we came together before one of us died. Interesting.

SPEAKER_06 47:15

And uh the story does not tie anything up it's just an account of the various testimonies. I does anyone know if uh seances were a thing that you would do in a court at this point in time or is that would that stand out if they actually got the guy's testimony?

SPEAKER_00 47:40

I have seen enough other media portrayals I don't know if this is historically whatever but there are enough other you know Kirosawa films and and sewer types of things that it is not it was it wouldn't have been seen as super weird.

SPEAKER_04 47:54

Yeah it's a traditional part of no theater you always have to have a ghost okay every no play does have a ghost so it's super traditional to have a ghost tell part of the story I have no idea whether any courts ever used mediums I sort of doubt it.

SPEAKER_06 48:14

It it's the last one in the story is there anything to sort of last will and testament I will note that in the movie one little remark is Dead men can't lie is there anything like that of obviously this is the account sure but that even if you go with dead men can't lie the next question is was that a man right then I I couldn't tell you there is a definitely a tradition of like among samurai and Zen monks you would write a death poem which is supposed to be like your best poem because you are the closest to death it's the last poem you write before dying um Swan Song if you will yeah but this is not I have no idea whether like in folk tradition a ghost would tell the truth or not couldn't say yeah I mean I could also see it being oh it's a ghost they're extremely unreliable right you know okay would you all like to uh take a step into the film sure the film is the one I remember least but I enjoyed it it was interesting when we were watching it I was like oh this is pretty close and then the other day I I read it and watched it straight back to back and I was like nah it's quite I mean you know there are very a lot of similarities but it is quite an adaptation yeah yeah I think that the samurai's assistant in Rashomon the short story is the guy who shows up and is told all the stories to in the movie because at the end he takes the infant's clothes and leaves you know and says I have the means to do this and he leaves yeah it's like he like combined the two stories yeah at first I was thinking it was just oh it's at the gate I don't get why he called it that why didn't he call it in the grove but watching it and reading it and watching it and reading it I was like oh I think that's the same guy.

SPEAKER_04 50:32

So I will begin this small presentation by stating that I think that Kurosawa changed this from the story. This is not in the story this is not from a Kutagawa and further I want to also assert that it is not about women in particular or rape in particular but that I think that one of the rules by which this was constructed was that each of the three gives themselves direct physical causal agency in the story but they put their emotional agency on some specific other person. So I I like I killed him in a fugue state but I had to because he was looking at me with disgust and like I killed myself but I had to because she betrayed me or I killed him in a duel but I had to because she challenged me her fierce spirit called it up in me.

SPEAKER_05 51:51

I was so in love with her right and then the woodcutter's story is a higher level of that sorry two stories right I don't understand he tells one story to the oh yeah I mean the second the real woodcutter story uh yeah the second woodcutter story real woodcutter story okay okay right no but the second woodcutter story it's not just that each of them so in the woodcutter story the wife has the causal agency she makes them fight each other by mocking them into it they've given up their agency to her and what she wants specifically is not to have to have agency over herself she's like don't you know women want a man who will fight for them make me go with you take me please but this is not I'm again I think very much that this is not about women because he does it for the male characters as well every character in this story is trying to put their emotional agency on somebody else even as they admit that they had physical agency over what actually happens it was their choice that led to the thing that happens happening they had to do it because of what somebody else was putting on them emotionally okay including the dead guy because I kind of thought he didn't um oh I'm thinking I if we're talking about the film I don't remember it as vividly yeah I'm trying to remember the guy in the film I would agree with you except that the woman's is asymmetric is uh is symmetrical but forked it's not as single as the guy's for the woman she sees that now that she has been assaulted by this man in front of her husband it one of them does indeed have to die or there will be two men uh yeah and in the film he highlights that really clearly it's like you've been with two men kill yourself that's the answer like that's the guy's answer to her is there's a solution for this kill yourself delete yourself she doesn't want to die she sees that there is a solution it's for one of the two men to kill the other because she can't kill either that's in the woodcutter story where he's like yeah where the samurai is very cruel to her and he says I would rather have the horse than her at this point.

SPEAKER_04 54:34

She should just kill herself uh huh yeah so that's yeah yeah what in the movie what is what's a quick sketch of the guy's story so the samurai's story what he says of her she had never looked so beautiful he says that wasn't her only sin or I wouldn't be suffering in the dark like this so he says that like the reason for his suffering is that she said to the bandit kill him while he's alive I cannot go with you yep so that that's the samurai in his own story being like my suffering and my the bad thing the suicide was because of what she did in wife did this to me I'm remembering yeah the thief the bandit shoves her down and says you decide right to him yes and he says I would have forgiven him all of that yeah just for that line yes so he's specifically like he doesn't think the bandit did it to him he thinks his wife did it to him so after establishing that my my thesis is that what it's a what is the structure of what's happening is that every character is trying to shove agency off onto other characters I will make my second thesis which is that it was destroys your first it was not actually a rape that it was consensual. The filmmaking makes that clear explicitly right that's well it's explicit in Ojibaru's claim it's just gave into me and I had her in the bandits story it shows it it literally the camera shows us in the bandit's story her hand reaching around his back to embrace him and it shows her relaxing and dropping the dagger instead of struggling stabs into the ground and it stabs into the ground in a very sort of suggestive way.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

Ah I like the idea that the that the bandit is the only honest one.

SPEAKER_04 56:49

But there's an the lady does not now in the Akutagawa story all of them call it an assault an attack and the bandit definitely disarms her before he violates her.

SPEAKER_05 57:04

But in the film they mostly don't they call I think at one point it's called an attack but none of them actually say that it was unwilling on her part and she doesn't say it either well right because she just gives up and goes along rather than at some point she gives up it's not to say that she's into it it's to say that she stops resisting.

SPEAKER_04 57:33

I think I think this is why this is a thesis that sort of depends on my overall reading of it but I think that the reason the lady is reporting so strongly that her husband's look at her is one of disgust is that her husband saw her being into it. Oh right when she when it ended and she looked at him she didn't see anger she specifically says he wasn't angry he wasn't scared there was a cold light of disgust in his eyes which is like saying he thought I was into it and she doesn't say I wasn't into it. Yeah yeah and in in the woodcutter story she as much as says I decided that I wanted you to take me I saw when I heard that it was a bandit I heard it was you and then in the samurai's story it is her betrayal of him and her telling the bandit to kill him which is the big sin.

SPEAKER_06 58:37

That's interesting because I I didn't see that because like when I heard her say when I heard it was you I took that as her buttering him up you know I didn't take it as a true thing but if you take it as the true thing then it makes sense the way you're saying it.

SPEAKER_04 59:00

But I think also to pull in Dwight your point when it comes to these very emotional and traumatic things it is often the case that you know maybe the same set of facts can be interpreted in multiple ways. I think the first time you see the movie you assume that it's a rape and it makes perfect sense that way. But I think when you look a little deeper and you like take notes like I took a lot of notes and then realized like oh crap.

SPEAKER_05 59:31

You know well hang on I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with the idea of saying that because on some level at some point she enjoyed it in some way that it's not rape right we're saying the point is that while she was being raped what was so terrible was she enjoyed it and so on some level does that make it not rape well now we're talking about a very weird very careful existential matter that's its own little you know thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:03

She wanna be careful yeah it might be an examination of like the true evil of rape is in that some sort of subversion and making the victim enjoy it somehow or something gross.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:17

So that is one of the grotesque things about it right is that this thing that you should only be feeling in a safe way you're feeling in this other way. So anyway. Yeah so but the deceit of it all right that's where the evil comes right is the idea that this woman has taken the place of rape as the sort of unholy marital ceremony for this new husband and it will require the death of her old husband of blood sacrifice to this that's certainly the new unholy union.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:56

That's certainly like the woodcutter's story I I knew a girl once who told me an account which I will not go into too much detail but of an experience she had as a teen in which she was raped in a terrible situation. And she dealt with a whole lot of guilt because he was bigger and so forth than she was and she stopped struggling after a point. Right? My point here is to say the pleasure part's not the interesting part. Right? Or I mean okay sure there's some kind of layers of that but her thing was she started having guilt and by the time I knew her she'd been struggling with it for some years and had led to you know some suicidal uh things and deep issues around potential promiscuity or other things because she didn't know how to deal with herself having done what she thought was a kind of self-betrayal. Right. And it's interesting that she had subsequent actions that almost let me say it this way they almost were decisions to act in ways that justified her younger self's perceived self-betrayal right that there's like that's like there's a lot of layers there and I think those are also present in the at least in the movie version of this I mean this I think this movie could that could be the whole story of this movie.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:35

The entire thing could be in her mind and it's just different scenarios spun up due to like that exact guilt possibly I think that would be way to read this.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:48

Sort of like the samurai sitting at the gate of Rashimon thinking about his options.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

I could see this not being a trial yeah I'm not saying that I think this is portrayed at all but I could see this as a fantasy trial working out things. I mean I've done that kind of thing right like try to look at it from different perspectives and stuff I don't I don't think that's I'm not getting that from the story. I'm saying that's a I think valid it's a little easier to be a valid representation it's a little easier from the written story as opposed to the movie we're probably gonna need to put a trigger warning on this episode.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:26

Uh yeah or redact half of it might have to click the explicit button so let me ask this question why do you think that sotagawa doesn't positively locate the dagger at the end of the book but Kurosawa does so in the other thing that happens what's that in an account right I think that's just like Akutagawa put it in as like a a fun little Easter egg that somebody took the dagger I wonder who it was and Kurosawa was like nobody watching this film is going to get is gonna get that so I better make it a little bit more obvious. Well hang on I think there might be more to it if you look at it through ritual Bushido code and stuff. I mean there's matters of honor and like the husband says kill yourself the dagger is the implement of death the fact that the dagger is not there at the end of the book is very interesting because somebody should have taken it and used it probably to kill themselves you know from a ritual suicide perspective if you're gonna be honorable.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:46

The reason it's not there is because someone does take it that's the last of the book someone drew the small sword softly out of my breast in its invisible hand at that same time once more blood flowed into my mouse and once and for all I sank down in the darkness of space that's the end.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:02

I made that note and I'd forgotten.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:04

Yeah is that the woman coming back or is that the thief or is that the wood I don't know from the story if you would suspect the woodcutter at this point but in the movie you might yeah it's a weird little thing in the story that's not quite accounted for I think yeah it to me it seems like stories in uh that way on purpose. Yeah specifically leaving strings lying down on the ground well this is uh this is one of the pillars of Japanese aesthetics.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:45

I don't know if you're familiar I don't know I couldn't tell you the specific word for it but one of them is to leave a small deliberate error in an otherwise perfect piece.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:57

Yeah that's an ancient Chinese practice to Not upset the gods when you make a perfect thing, you have to put a flaw in it, or heaven will look down at you and go, How dare you?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:10

That's Islamic too. Maybe it's a common thing. There are eight errors?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:21

So no, eight cultures that have that principles. I'm talking about Wabi Sabi, I believe.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:29

Oh yeah, Wabi Sabi is different. Wabi sabi is the acceptance that everything's broken, or that you repair it, but you don't fully repair it. You leave something broken about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:45

Well, I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't know if I I don't have the words right. But one of them is you dil leave a little deliberate error.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:54

So does it have to be a hero or can it be an untied, untied knot?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:59

Yeah. Just like if you're making a clay pot, you know, maybe you leave one little bit of that's not glazed. So it's rough, or something like that. Or in your calligraphy, you let one little drop of ink fall in a place where it shouldn't.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:18

So to put a finer point, Matthew, on this separation of the locus of control, of physical action, and then somebody made me do it, right? That there's each of them has a narrative that they want to uphold and a thing that they have to give up if they want to hold on to it. Like they can't hold on to it. All three of them are trying to do something, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. Like the bandit wants to be seen as this incredible master swordsman who crossed blades 23 times, but he has to be a murderer, right? He's murdered this guy. The wife wants to be seen as tragic and victimized to the point that it drove her to kill her husband. Like, if she wants the premise, this premise that she's got, she makes this argument that then she ends up eating away at her own premise, right? And then the husband, I don't know his as well. He's into power.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:26

He's like, Poor me, I was betrayed. I had to kill myself because my wife asked the bandit to kill me.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:35

I have a question about the film. Are the visuals when they are recalling the events in total control of the recaller? Or is it something like Kurosawa representing their story from his own point of view? And specifically, I'm mostly thinking of, but other things also hinted at this. When the in when the bandit's telling his story, he and the samurai fight, and it is one of the most pathetic sword fights, except for the later one, when uh the woodcutter tells his story, it's even more pathetic. It is not heroic. They're not 23 exchanges. I don't know, maybe if you count them, they're swords touch 23 times, but it is not a nice, you know, formal fight, hit, retreat, fight, hit, retreat.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:38

Well, I'm not a great judge of these things, but I think any awkwardness in the earlier sword fight, like as depicted by the bandit, is it's supposed to be the bandit is supposed to be like this wild, untrained, but brilliant talent who's like, you know, in his eyes, he's great, but he's a complete outsider, and his swordsmanship reflects that outsider-ness. So he's doing like the whole thing with like you know, flipping around the trees and running through the underbrush and like weird moves, and it's sort of showcasing the the awkwardness of a samurai trying to use like traditional, like square samurai moves in the woods against a crazy wild monkey guy bandit with a gigantic way too big sword. Okay. I think something like that is going on where it's like there there is awkwardness, and it doesn't look like when two samurai fight each other in an empty street. But it's I think that it is what the bandit is trying to convince everybody of.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:57

Huh. Also note that in this fight, it is not two samurai, it is two bandits.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:06

What explain why is the samurai actually a bandit?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:11

Because he's lured him in there for dig up the treasure. He's he's uh he's getting stolen goods illicitly to go sell and junk. Yeah. Hmm. He ends up having to fight like a bandit, though he's trained like a samurai. In in not on a street, not where it's paved, not where it's open space, right? In the jungle, in the wild with this wild man, he has become the wild man and is not in his element. So yeah, the what's good.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:45

You're saying Kurosawa attempted and achieved that goal to show either Matt's samurai versus wild man or Sir Robert's Wildman versus wild man. My impression was that Kurosawa was coming in and showing undercutting the bandit and everybody and showing how pathetic anyone fighting in the jungle. I guess it's a little bit like what Sir Robert is saying. That my my my goal, what my thought of what was happening there was.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:21

Yeah, maybe I don't I'm not gonna hold on to my interpretation of that particular fight scene too strongly.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:29

It's happening, uh, first of all, me neither, I just thought of it and so forth. But this is happening at a couple of different layers because that exact same fight in the movie, that exact same fight happens between over the baby, right? The morally upstanding one is revealed to not be the morally upstanding one by the one who's the yeah, the woodcutter. Clearly, yeah. The same thing, well, not the same thing. Oh my god, arguably happens in the court, right? Um, I can't actually remember if this is the movie or the book because I don't they kind of blended a little bit. But this it at least in the story, the bandit says, We're the same hurting people. I just do it honestly with a sword, and you do it sitting up there and all high and mighty, right? There's this is there's lots of places. They're having a fight in the court, they're having a fight in the jungle, they're having a fight at the Rashimon temple. There's a lot of stuff going on with innocence getting caught.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:33

Yeah. And they're getting caught in a way that it's hard to even make sense of, right? Is there even are we sure that it is possible for one of these three stories to come out real and true without making the others be forced into incompatible logic faults or something like that? See what I mean? Like I'm not even sure that these three possible stories can survive each other under certain rules of like if this one is true, then it nullifies those two. But then if you nullify those two, there's downstream implications.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:14

I think with that, there's also the opportunity for something like my example in football of one camera from this way shows it as super easy, and this other camera reveals it as impossible. So you can see.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:31

What if all three cameras' views are incompatible?

SPEAKER_06 1:14:33

Yeah, I'm not saying that you can definitely pull it all together, but I'm saying that you could have a whole portion of the story that seems incompatible with this story, but they are both views of the same thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:47

So let me add some evidence that might help with a thesis of this kind, which I mentioned earlier, which was a strange thing that I noticed when I was taking notes. I maybe I'll explain my note-taking. I had an initial thesis, which was that there's one underlying emotional reality, but that the physical descriptions were different, and that if I were to take notes of who felt what way about who in each of the stories, they might come out the same, even though what happened was different. That's not true. The emotional reality in the different stories is very, very different, as well as the actual stuff that happens. But I ended up going through each story and taking down the emotions felt by the bandit for the samurai, the bandit for the lady, the samurai for the bandit, the samurai for the lady, the lady for the samurai, and the lady for the bandit for all four stories, trying to figure out, you know, what lines of dialogue tell about this emotional relationship, how this person feels about this other person. And there's a strange pattern, which is that each of the each of the living witnesses neglects one relationship between the three principles. So I'm not sure what it means, but in the bandits story, there I could not find any lines of dialogue that describe how the samurai feels for the lady or how the lady feels for the samurai in the bandit's story. They don't they look at each other, sort of at one point, and then in the lady's story, there are no lines of dialogue devoted to how the lady feels about the bandit or how the bandit feels about the lady in the lady's story.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:50

And then this is in the in the short story, not the movie. No, in the film. No, in the film. This is in the film. Oh, oh, there's motion, but not no, that's in yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:03

Okay, keep going. In the woodcutter's story, there are lots of lines of dialogue about how everybody feels about everybody else, but the one that is much less is the bandit for the samurai and the samurai for the bandit. There are no lines of dialogue about how the samurai feels about the bandit. There's only one line where the bandit says to the samurai, don't bully her. Women are weak, which indicates that he feels dismissive of the samurai, or he might, you know, that might tell us something about how he feels about. But that's it. The only one where everybody's emotional feeling for everybody else is covered is the ghost's testimony. But the woodcutter skips the relationship between the bandit and the samurai. The lady skips the relationship between herself and the bandit, and the bandit skips the relationship between the lady and the samurai. Just basically just leave they just leave it out. They don't even really, those two characters like don't even. I mean, even in the one where they fight, like in the woodcutter's story, the bandit and the samurai actually fight, but all of the emotional dialogue that tells you how somebody feels is about the lady's feelings about them or their feelings about the lady. Yeah. They don't they they're not like I hate you to each other. They just don't, that doesn't happen at all. So it's just an interesting, it's clear to me, having gone through this, that the film is very tightly structured. Like it's not sloppy, it's like super each one of the four stories has like a crisis moment where somebody presents a challenge to somebody else and things change after that. It's like it's very, it's very structured and deliberate. Anyway, I thought I would mention that. No, that's I don't know what it means.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:07

Me neither.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:08

So the film interrupts that symmetry. I see what you're saying. There's a certain symmetry there that makes it look almost like the ghost is the one telling the real story because it incorporates all the perspectives, all three instead of two. But in Kurosawa's film, as the woman is leaning back in Tojumaru's story, and she's starting to enjoy it more. You see the daffled shadows of the leaves on the face. And in order to achieve that, he had to come up with new lighting and shadow technology. No one had ever gotten a shot like that before. No one was shooting directly into the sunlight, like he broke a lot of rules, and he broke those rules to tell a story very particularly because he wanted to use the light, the shadow, and wind as characters in the story.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:07

There's real good shot, especially wind. There's a real good shot of the bandit when he's sitting there, and when the wind blows, the you see the shadow of the leaves move, and then it hits him. So that modes across the screen.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:24

Those of you who noticed the wind, what is the wind's role? Like as a character, what action does it take?

SPEAKER_06 1:20:33

Like he says that he never would have uh interacted with these people if it weren't for the wind, and it blew her veil up.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:40

He got a glimpse of her, and uh that's the wind's like introduction. Yeah, I noticed the wind existing in a couple more places, but is there something that it represents or something that it like does?

SPEAKER_05 1:20:55

Yeah, I mean it's killing these people. I think it's the winds of like almost death. I mean, it's it's really crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:04

Um I was just saying I didn't notice the wind at all. I don't have any memory of it. I I'm interested. I just I can't contribute here.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:18

So that's interesting. When the seance is happening, they've got obviously lots of fans, industrial fans, blowing at this person. Their garments are whipping wildly. So this medium is shown to be channeling the other world or something from the other side through two things. One, well, three. So one, their garments are being whipped around, two, their voice is different, and it's through a different filter, and that's a filter effect that gets used in other places too. So it's got some amount of like motif to it, and it shows that that is what it means to be in the nexus of the other world, to be affected by the other world, to be in this nexus of it, all the wind. So, from that perspective, the wind blowing across these scenes in different moments makes me feel like we're seeing moments where the spirit world, where spirit, where forces beyond our control are touching things.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:24

I found it really interesting here in talking about a movie that we're often given the opportunity to talk about how we remember the movie that is about people talking about how they remember an event. It's oh are we in the movie? I mean, I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:51

The never-ending story.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:56

But you know, like I I remember, you know, we watched it all together, and then I the next day, I think it was two days later, I read the story and immediately watched it after, and I was like, oh, these different things, these things feel different, you know. If I were to write a short account of the movie after that first time and after the second time, those would be two different accounts, and uh that's very true for me, yeah. And some of it was just the second view. Like I noticed the woodcutter looking concerned, and I knew why this time. Before it was just him and the Buddhist monk were concerned about this weird case, but now I know oh, the woodcutter is puzzling over how the his actual story conflicts with these accounts that he's re recounting.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:54

Oh, well, there's actually the second time, the very end of the samurai's story through the medium, the second time you watch the film is hilarious because in the shot, the medium is like centered but a little bit to the left, and then in the background, the woodcutter is sitting there, and when the medium is like, and I never saw the dagger again. I didn't notice that you think you can you almost think that the medium is gonna like turn their head and look at the woodcutter and say, You took it, and the woodcutter's like looking real shifty, and it's pretty funny because he's afraid that the medium is gonna be like you stole my dagger.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:44

So, where does that put the woodcutter? Does that make him think, oh wait, this is all hot garbage. That guy doesn't know what he's talking about. I should have just gotten busted. Maybe. I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:56

I mean, also the guy died. He in the story at least, he just notices the dagger is taken. In the movie, I don't think we see the guy seeing the woodcutter take the dagger. He might not know. The woodcutter also might not know that he doesn't know. So, you know, that maybe that's why he was looking concerned.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:20

But I think I remember that at the end of the film, the rain stops. That's a weather thing. Sun comes out, and I think also in the final in the um the woodcutter story, during the fight, they're all sweating a lot. Which I think means there's no wind during that story. The bandit that's constantly. Oh no, that's no no no, not during the woodcutter story. That's during the bandits in the bandit's story, he's constantly slapping bugs. He doesn't do that in the other stories. I don't know why. But in the woodcutter story, the bandit is always like wiping, wiping sweat off of himself and flicking it away.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:10

I think I remember it also suddenly appearing. I think it's the bandit is maybe holding the lady and says something to her, and then they it cuts to them again, and they're suddenly all sweaty, but I I might not be remembering that correctly.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:28

Yeah, I think it does appear kind of suddenly.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:31

There's this contradistinction between the woman looking into her husband's eyes and screaming, stop looking at me with that cold light in your eyes. And to me, that was the real kind of crescendo hook.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:47

Did she say it like that? She says cold light.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:50

She says a cold light in your eyes.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:52

Does she say stop looking? I don't remember that. I remember her saying there was a lot of things.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:57

She doesn't say the phrase stop looking at me. Yes. She says, I see the cold light in your eyes, and everything else around it collapses down to stop looking at me this way. You're killing me and hurting me.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:09

Oh yeah. And that's cold light in your eyes. Yeah. She does say stop. She's she's actually repeatedly. Yeah. She's using stop as she advances towards him with the dagger point forward. Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:24

The subtitles go away and irritated me a little bit because I was like, wait, what did she? I forgot what she was saying. You gotta put stomp up again for me every once in a while. But in the film, she does not stab him. I will note she passes out, she wakes up, and he has been stabbed.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:46

Yeah, but I mean, don't we expect that an upper class lady in a court will not say, and then I stabbed him to get him to stop looking. At me like that, she'll say, The last thing I remember was grabbing the dagger, and then I woke up and his blood was everywhere. Isn't that like of course that's what she's gonna say after she's like that's her way of saying I stabbed him. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:20

Maybe in the story, though, in the testimony, she stabs him. Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:27

And we shouldn't introduce that layer of interpretation as well as like if we're gonna say she claims this, then we should keep it consistent that what she claims is what she claims.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:40

Yeah, I had a question. In the I listened to a couple audiobooks of the short story and read the short story in most of the accounts. In fact, I it was only one in most of the accounts, she says she stabbed herself in the neck and that didn't kill her. And there was one that that translation was slightly different. Like maybe it was out I tried to stab myself in the neck, and that leaves room for is has she in the just in the short, obviously in the movie she hasn't because it's three days later, her neck is totally fine. In the short story, has she stabbed herself in the neck unsuccessfully? Killing Yeah, here it is. Uh I think she on the bottom of page five, the last paragraph, it uh says, I stabbed my own throat with a small sword.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:30

She tried to drown herself and some other stuff, but she doesn't have it in her to actually go through with it. That's what she that's what her own conclusion is.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:39

Yeah. But I'm wondering, did she, you know, stab in and just not hit I think she drew blood.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:50

Ouch.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:52

What do you think? Did you notice anything about the movie?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:58

Well, first, I watched it with Aaron Joy here. She had come over we I was part way through and she came and joined me. So that was interesting to it was different than watching it because I was catching her up with it too, which helped me to notice a few things. I think that I actually paid more attention in general to the Rashimon Gate element of the story, the in the movie, I mean, than to the conflicting accounts that were given. Actually, you know what? In order, I paid more attention to the Rashon Gate, then second to the court, then third to the actual I that wasn't on purpose, I just am realizing that now. And I think that here are just some notes. I found the monk character to be if I were to criticize the movie, which I don't have a particular desire to, if it was it was well done, I liked it. But I think the monk character was a bit on the nose for me as far as commentary and that. Though I will also say that the art style, I benefit from like 50 years of being able to handle subtlety in the art style, right? Cinema. So it's one thing. Another thing is I found myself wondering how much of not the in the movie, I mean, not the events in the grove, but how much of the events in the court were made up. I doubted things like whether the incident in the grove happened at all.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:35

But weren't both the monk and the other guy and the woodcutter were in court. Yeah. And then they're both under the Roshamon.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:46

Yeah. I didn't have any solid case about it, but I found myself like it made maybe as the three layers or something, but it made me deeply suspicious that like I don't know. I I don't want to say go so far as to say that it was some kind of con or something, because it didn't feel like that, right? At the end, but it it was so much hearsay on so many layers, in all three layers, I think. It was just hard for me to trust like any of it. The monk character, though, seemed and maybe this is why, maybe he felt flatter than the other ones, because he didn't, as far as I could tell, have any reason for deception.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:25

Yeah. His testimony was just those two people were on the road.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:31

Yeah. He's kind of being a he's the occasion for talking and explaining the things. He's a a MacGuffin, kind of, I think.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:41

Well, he's more than a MacGuffin, right? Because Kyoto just got wrecked by famine, flood, and fire. And so he is supposed to show the fragility of the Japanese spirit transitioning into modernity, I think. Like, you know, the great wave of Kanagawa represents the West, America and England and the West suddenly coming up like this huge wave and crashing into their existence as a civilization. I think Kyoto is meant to be kind of metonymy. It's standing in for Japan as they're being crushed by this threefold natural disaster that's breaking their spirit in a spiritually.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:30

So what do you think's happening when that sounds fine. I don't I don't know about I hadn't thought about that. What do you think's happening when the woodsman takes the baby at the end and the monk is maybe feeling a little less skepticism and grief about the human spirit or whatever he said? The human soul faith in the restored, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:33:54

Yeah, but I feel like that's Kurosawa trying to bring Japanese grit. Japanese have a very deep capacity to go to places that are dark and would scare off Westerners, right? Because they will follow a thing through. I would argue that and defend it through the illustration of the chimpanzee documentary that some Japanese people may look at it sometime. It's utterly fascinating to see a Japanese societal perspective on primates. It's very cool. But by having this woodcutter try to take the baby from the monk, I think there's something there, right? Because there's a struggle over a baby where there's unclear or muddled intent. So we're back into the whole mirroring is it sexual assault? Did the woman lure this guy into assaulting her so that she could get her husband killed? But back to the two dudes. I mean, it's really meant to be we as Japanese people are kind of taking the baby and continuing on with our lives. Like all you can do is just take a baby and raise him up. And if you do that, then the baby will still be alive and it'll be raised by someone who's a real Japanese person, and then it'll be another Japanese baby, and the cycle goes on. So it's a certain kind of not just a little bit of sugar in your cup, but I mean it's meant to be like remember who you are, remember that this is all we have to do is have babies and raise our children and survive, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:35

They don't in the film, they don't talk about the earthquakes and the fires and stuff, do they?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:40

Yeah, they're talking about how the it just got destroyed.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:43

Yeah. Oh that's why everything's destroyed. Everything's in a state of destruction.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:49

I think I remember yeah, I I think I remember somebody basically saying the line from Rashimon the short story about earthquakes, fires, and I can't remember what's going on.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:02

Oh, at the very beginning, yeah. Yeah. Um the woodcutter taking the baby is making a choice, like causally taking control of the situation, and not blaming anybody else emotionally.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:22

I already have six kids, it won't make a difference to me. It's okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:26

It's a little bit naive of the monk. I mean, I feel like the monk picks up the baby and is un you know, I'm not sure what to do with it. But after all of this example of human deceit and everything, he's like, Oh, okay, this guy'll take him. It's cool. I I I believe in human again.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:50

But it isn't it really we're back to um who's the guy, the French philosopher, was it Baudelaire or whoever was like, our virtues are really our vices, they're really just disguised and inverted. Speaking of La Roche Foucault. La Roche Foucault. This dude, he's a grabber, man. He sees a dagger, he grabs it. He sees a baby, grabs it. He's just grabbing stuff out here. But that's the message, right? Is that in this world, you've got to be the kind of person who grabs stuff because sometimes you might grab something in a, you know, in this way, and it's shameful and you'll have to wrestle with it. But it might be okay as long as when that moment comes when you have to grab something for the right reason, you really grab it and you really follow through. We need grabbers.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:39

I want to think that it's not about Japan particularly, but about the human condition.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:46

I deeply disagree. I think this is an intensely Japanese, ethnocentric. It's a personal biological biographic.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:56

There's no westerners in it.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:58

Not even like I was talking about the great wave of Kanagawa, the crashing into the West. This is the crashing in of modernity.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:08

I modernity does not have to limit itself to where does modernity even show up? I think it's about like this fundamental divide in the human spirit where we want to be in control, but we don't want to be in control. And I think that you know, I I certainly see that in myself.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:34

Anyway, a little bit like we have oh, hang on, wait a minute. That's we have decided a thing, and then we come back and we find it to not be decided.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:45

Well, they want control so badly that in a court context, they're claiming to be responsible for the death so that they can control something about the narrative. They're willing to do this thing that normally characters should not be doing, like, right? That's part of the conceit of this story is that wait, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:06

These are the murder mystery version, they all claim not to have done it.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:09

Yeah, these guys are competing for control because it's so important to them that they control the narrative.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:14

That one, I get the Christie one where they all um Sir Robert. Also, I wanted to say that I think I felt something similar about not really caring about the like clues and practical details of this scenario in each of the stories in the movie, finding myself wanting to focus on the emotional reality because I was sort of like, yeah, well, you know, who ran out of the clearing first? The woman or the bandit? Like, who cares? But also, I do think another watch of this movie making careful notes about all the forensic details of every scene might be rewarding. I'll bet, you know, Josh asked the question earlier like, could we put together what actually happened? Yeah, but I think you can't know unless you go through and you like, you know, what prop was where, when, who had what, who played this car?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:19

Type of deal.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:20

Yeah, like actually going and diagramming all this stuff out would I bet it would reveal something very interesting, but I'm not I didn't do it.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:33

It's a little bit like one other contemporary, although maybe slightly dated example Kaiser Sose. Uh I was thinking of the black and blue dress, or is it gold and white dress?

SPEAKER_05 1:40:47

Uh oh, right.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:50

And at the end of that, we were rewarded with the answer. There is a dress, incorrect though it was, and when you take it in and when you look at it with your eyes instead of through a camera, you will know I can't remember which one it was. And what was real interesting to me in that example, that experience of life, is like a two-dimensional cube. I was eventually able to see either way, you know. I could see black and gold, and I could be like, oh wait, no, different white point. Uh no, sorry, not black and gold. White and gold. Oh no, a different what I think it was actually blue and black.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:35

It was blue and black. In the okay. You're right. That was the one with the final reveal.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:44

But it's not super important. It what was interesting to me is there are people who told me that their internal ability was that they could not see the other one. I was like, huh. That's very strange. Because once I was told of the op the alternative, I was like, oh, I see that. And I also see just like a cube, you know, where which face is at the front, and it's it reminds me.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:07

I mean, in the movie, the part that was most like that is there, I think there are three times where somebody says some variant of the speech that because of this rape, somebody has to die, so that there can only be one man with this woman.

unknown 1:42:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:24

Whether it's the woman telling it to the two men or one of the men telling it to the other man, or like it shows up a couple of times, and it made me think like, oh, if there's a reality here, maybe something maybe somebody did say something like this.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:42

Yep. Which makes sense, right? Because honor is the thing. All right. Well, next week, please join us again for more conversation about a space traveler dealing with time loops and sociological absurdity in Stanislaw Limb's The Star Diaries. Thank you for joining us for this discussion. You are dismissed with the following valediction from Shakespeare's Midsupper Night's Dream. Now the hungry lion roars and the wolf behowls the moon, whilst the heavy ploughman snores all with weary task for done. Now the wasted brands do glow, whilst the screech owl screeching loud, puts the wretch that lies in woe in remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night, that the graves all gaping wide, every one lets forth his strike in the churchway paths to glide. And we fairies that do run by the triple hectate's team, for the presence of the sun following darkness like a dream, now our frolic. Not a mouse shall disturb this hallowed house. I am sent with Broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door.