Introduction to Unit One

The Rashomon Effect

Readings

“The Historian and His Facts” by E.H. Carr (1961)

“Steering Between History’s Two Fallacies” by Wilfred McClay (2000)

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Rashomon

Classic 1950 film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

Explores apparent subjectivity of historical truth

Multiple narrators tell conflicting accounts of a single event

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“That’s not how I

remember it!”

Marge: “You loved Rashomon!”

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Homer: “That’s not how I remember it!”

The Plot

Film based in part on two early 20th century

short stories by R. Akutagawa—“In A Grove”

and “Rashomon.”

Set about one thousand years ago in

medieval Japan, outside the decaying capital

of Kyoto, under the partially ruined city gate

called Rashomon

The five versions are mutually exclusive and

contradictory. They physically can not all be

true.

So are humans capable of perceiving or

telling the truth?

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“The Rashomon Effect”

The four narrators in

Rashomon—striking poses to

match their characters—tell

five radically different versions

of the same story.

The fact that witnesses often

give contradictory accounts

comes to be called “The

Rashomon Effect”

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Rashomon Effect in Action

Humans See the World the Way They

Prefer to See it

1. December 7 vs. August 6 (Pearl Harbor vs. Hiroshima)

2. Crusade vs. Jihad

3. The Civil War vs. The War

Between the States

The Battle Cry of Freedom-Northern

vs. Southern versions

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Rashomon was made only five years

after the atomic devastation of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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Rashomon Effect

in action

My Japan is a 1945 U.S.

propaganda film

designed to scare

Americans into buying

war bonds

Clearly an alleged

American view of a

Japanese perspective!

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The Forgetting Curve

http://faithoncam

pus.com/wp-

content/uploads/

2012/07/Memor

y-Retention-

Forgetting-

Curve-800.png

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http://faithoncampus.

com/wp-

content/uploads/2012

/07/Memory-

Retention-Forgetting-

Curve-800.png

Eyewitnesses usually don’t see

what they think they see!

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The pursuit of truth…

“Just as the purpose of medicine is not perfect health,

but the struggle against illness —

Just as the purpose of law is not perfect justice

but the pursuit of it through the vigilance against

injustice —

The purpose of the historian is not…perfect truth

but the pursuit of truth through a reduction of

ignorance….”

By Historian John Lukacs

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