Beatrice: What’s this?
Nausicaä: Rashomon. The opening scene. Kurosawa’s film. 1950.
Beatrice: I remember now. Pretty bleak. How did it begin? Rain. What rotten weather. Didn’t have to say that. You could see it.
Nausicaä: No, the first words by the woodcutter are,”I don’t understand.” And then commoner arrives, seeking shelter, and wants to know what it is that’s not understood. And so the stories are told. The different versions of what happened between the samurai, his wife and the bandit.
Beatrice: What was the function of the gate, Rashomon?
Nausicaä: It was a stage setting. And well chosen.
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Voice-over
Japan has dramatic weather. Just as the rain lashed Rashomon, every year there are floods. Fewer bandits and lawlessness there may be, but natural disasters still cause havoc and take lives. Like the Atami mudslide.
And at the moment… the rain it raineth every day.
"He that has and a little tiny wit / With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain / Must make content with his fortunes fit, / For the rain it raineth every day.”
Fool in King Lear. William Shakespeare: Act 2, Scene 3.
Rashomon had a Shakespearean air.
