1. Introduction to Unit One
The Rashomon Effect

2. Readings
 “The Historian and His
Facts” by E.H. Carr (1961)
 “Steering Between
History’s Two Fallacies”
by Wilfred McClay (2000)
2

3. Rashomon
 Classic 1950 film by Japanese
director Akira Kurosawa
 Explores apparent subjectivity
of historical truth
 Multiple narrators tell
conflicting accounts of a single
event
3

4. 4

5. “That’s not how I
remember it!”
Marge: “You loved Rashomon!”
Homer:
“That’s not
how I
remember it!”
5

6. 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?
6

7. “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”
7

8. 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
8

9. Rashomon was made only five years
after the atomic devastation of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
9

10. 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!
10

11. The Forgetting Curve
http://faithoncam
pus.com/wp-
content/uploads/
2012/07/Memor
y-Retention-
Forgetting-
11 Curve-800.png

12. http://faithoncampus.
com/wp-
content/uploads/2012
/07/Memory-
Retention-Forgetting-
12 Curve-800.png

13. Eyewitnesses usually don’t see
what they think they see!
13

14. 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
14