Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon and their legacies

199 Pages·2015·1.08 MB·English

by  Blair Davis

Rashomon Effects
Akira Kurosawa is widely known as the director who opened up Japanese
fi lm to Western audiences, and following his death in 1998, a process of
refl ection has begun about his life’s work as a whole and its legacy to cinema.
Kurosawa’s 1950 fi lm Rashomon has become one of the best-known Japanese
fi lms ever made, and continues to be discussed and imitated more than sixty
years after its fi rst screening.
T his book examines the cultural and aesthetic impacts of Akira Kurosawa’s
Rashomon , as well as the director’s larger legacies to cinema, its global
audiences and beyond. It demonstrates that these legacies are manifold: not
only cinematic and artistic, but also cultural and cognitive. The book moves
from an examination of one fi lmmaker and his immediate social context in
Japan, and goes on to explore how an artist’s ideas might transcend their
cultural origins to ultimately provide global infl uences. Discussing how
Rashomon ’s effects began to multiply with the fi lm being reimagined and
repurposed in numerous media forms in the decades that followed its initial
release, the book also shows that the fi lm and its ideas have been applied to
a wider range of social and cultural phenomena in a variety of institutional
contexts. It addresses issues beyond the realm of R ashomon within fi lm
studies, and extends to the Rashomon effect, which itself has become a widely
recognized English term referring to the signifi cantly different interpretations
of different eyewitnesses to the same dramatic event.
A s the fi rst book on Rashomon since Donald Richie’s 1987 anthology, it will
be invaluable to students and scholars of fi lm studies, fi lm history, Japanese
cinema and communication studies. It will also resonate more broadly with
those interested in Japanese culture and society, anthropology and philosophy.
Blair Davis is an Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies in the
College of Communication at DePaul University in Chicago, USA.
Robert Anderson is Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University
in Vancouver, Canada.
Jan Walls is a Professor Emeritus in the Humanities Department at Simon
Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.
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Edited by Daniel Biltereyst and Kurosawa, Rashomon and Their
Daniela Treveri Gennari Legacies
Edited by Blair Davis,
Robert Anderson and Jan Walls
Rashomon Effects
Kurosawa, Rashomon and their legacies
Edited by Blair Davis, Robert Anderson
and Jan Walls
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Blair Davis, Robert Anderson and Jan Walls
The right of the editors to be identifi ed as the authors of the editorial material,
and of the contributors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
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publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rashomon effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon and their legacies / edited by
Blair Davis, Robert Anderson and Jan Walls.
pages cm. – (Routledge advances in fi lm studies; 44)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Rashomon (Motion picture) 2. Kurosawa, Akira, 1910–1998–Criticism
and interpretation. 3. Kurosawa, Akira, 1910–1998–Infl uence. I. Davis,
Blair, editor. II. Anderson, Robert, editor. III. Walls, Jan, editor.
PN1997.R244R38 2015
791.43′72–dc23 2 015019880
ISBN: 978-1-138-82709-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73874-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Out of House Publishing
Dedicated to the memory of Donald Richie (1924–2013)
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

List of illustrations xi
Notes on contributors xii
Acknowledgments xv
Chronology xvii
Front cover image xix
1 Introduction 1
BLAIR DAVIS, ROBERT ANDERSON AND JAN WALLS
2 From Konjaku and Bierce to Akutagawa to
Kurosawa: Ripples and the evolution of Rashomon 11
JAN WALLS
3 ‘Smiled on by Lady Luck:  Rashomon ’ (2006) [ Waiting
on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa
(English translation by Juliet Carpenter)] 19
TERUYO NOGAMI
4 The production history of Rashomon 39
DONALD RICHIE
5 Rashomon perceived: The challenge of forging a
transnationally shared view of Kurosawa’s legacy 43
ANDREW HORVAT
6 Rashomon as a twelfth-century period picture and
Occupation period social critique 56
JANICE MATSUMURA
7 What is the Rashomon effect? 66
ROBERT ANDERSON