History Film / Rashomon

* CircularDrive: The famous long dolly shot at the beginning was achieved by having the actor walk in a figure eight pattern that crossed the dolly tracks twice. It looks like the camera is following him through the woods but he is actually walking around it.

** The wife filters everything through her own personal despair. As a result, Tajōmaru is just a violent maniac who flees after raping her, and she's a helpless victim silently denounced by her husband, who doesn't even speak or show a strong emotion.

* AnnoyingArrows: A constable finds Tajomaru with a bunch of arrows sticking out of his back.
* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler: The husband in the woodcutter's story is a misogynist who cruelly tells his wife to go kill herself after her possible rape by Tajomaru.]]

* BadassBoast: Tajoumaru's entire story is this; accepting he'll be executed, he goes all out in his story to not only make himself look good, but to portray the Samurai and the Bride as impressively (and honorably) as possible.
* BelievingTheirOwnLies: Possibly everyone who told a story but lied. The commoner's BreakingSpeech makes the Woodcutter realize he did this as the Commoner figured out the Woodcutter did not mention the valuable dagger spoke of by all the other stories and thus reasoned he stole it, giving the Woodcutter a HeroicBSOD as he found he can't even understand and trust his own soul.

* TheBladeAlwaysLandsPointyEndIn: When the Wife drops her dagger when the bandit starts kissing her, a close-up shot shows the blade landing pointy end in on the ground.

* CardCarryingVillain: Tajoumaru portrays himself as an unrepentant murderer and rapist, laughing evilly throughout his testimony. The other testimonies subvert this trope and paint him as a scared, pathetic, only-somewhat-thuggish bum.

* ChewingTheScenery: Tajoumaru, the Bandit. Heck, he doesn't just chew it--he grinds it up, spits it out, [[RefugeInAudacity wallows in it, and chews it up again!]]

* CrapsackWorld: One of Kurosawa's first depictions of feudal Japan which strays into this trope. The characters' disillusionment with humanity is as much about the events themselves and how, in a world fraught with so much death and violence, even a simple murder case is something to which people refuse to give a clear answer to. Turned into AWorldHalfFull by the end.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: After Tajoumaru sees the wife's face, he sits by the tree in a trance, grasping his ''tsurugi'' in a suggestive manner.

* DreamSue: Tajoumaru's story has him seduce a man's wife with but a kiss, releases the Samurai to let him die honorably, and proceeds to win a duel against him while controlling the fight completely. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking He also insists he did not fall off the horse he stole which resulted in his arrest, but got a stomachache from what must have been some bad water he drank]].

* EvenEvilHasStandards: In the dead man's version of the story, the wife orders Tajoumaru to kill her husband, and Tajoumaru looks shocked and refuses.

* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The names of the Priest, the Woodcutter and the Commoner are not revealed.
* EvilIsHammy: Tajoumaru deliberately invokes this to make himself look bigger and tougher than he is.
* EvilLaugh: Tajoumaru, the Bandit, all throughout his testimony. It counts as an AnnoyingLaugh, too. In [[spoiler: the Woodcutter's actual testimony, from the Woman -- either she's laughing at the Bandit's failure to kill her husband, or is laughing bitterly about the Bandit's feelings not being true and the fact that her "honorable samurai" is a wimp. Take your pick]].
* FaceDeathWithDignity: Tajoumaru tries to pull this. He states that he knew that the authorities would have his head sooner or later, so he tries to make himself look better in the flashback while still admitting to the murder.

* ForWantOfANail: Tajoumaru admits that if it hadn't been windy that day he wouldn't have seen the wife's face and the whole situation wouldn't have happened.

* GigglingVillain: Tajomaru laughs ''constantly''.

* HonorBeforeReason: The Bandit, the Samurai and the Wife all try to justify themselves by somehow involving honor. Completely absent in the Woodcutter's tale, which makes them all look like dishonorable fools.

* {{Jerkass}}: The commoner, who spends the whole movie berating and mocking the priest and the woodcutter and then leaves after [[KickTheDog literally stealing from a baby.]]

* LaughingMad: [[spoiler: During the Woodcutter's real testimony, the Samurai's wife breaks out in hysterics, at one point. One possible interpretation of the Wife's laughter within the Woodcutter's telling, as both Tajoumaru and her husband outright rejected her, or that they're both too cowardly to win her affection]].

* MrFanservice: Tajoumaru is an arguably inadvertent example. Wearing rags was to show how animalistic he was. However, he's still played by muscular, handsome Creator/ToshiroMifune and shows a lot of skin.
* MurderTheHypotenuse: [[spoiler: Set up by the Wife in the Woodcutter's story, who says the decision is not hers in response to Tajoumaru's begging for her to marry him and frees her husband from his bonds, but does not outright turn Tajoumaru down. They both flat-out disagree with starting such a thing over her, but they later do fight when she mocks them both as not being men by the samurai's unwillingness to avenge his wife's virtue and Tajoumaru's refusal to fight for his desires]].
* NamelessNarrative: No one besides Tajoumaru is given a name. Oddly, in ''In a Grove'', the man and his wife did have names: Takehiro and Masago Kanazawa.

* RashomonStyle: The TropeNamer and TropeCodifier, as Tajomaru, the wife, the samurai, and the woodcutter all have different recollections of the samurai's murder. Most of the variants that have followed don't bring the dead guy to the party.
* RealityIsUnrealistic: During the bandit Tajoumaru's testimony, he boasts that he crossed blades over twenty times with the samurai in the course of their duel. This is all movie fighting; in a real sword fight they would cross far fewer times. A very realistic example of such is performed by Kyūzō early on in ''Film/SevenSamurai'' - and shown in the [[spoiler: Woodcutter's testimony - the two men spend more time trying to desperately dodge and read each other's motions, and when they swing, they hit empty air.]]
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: The Samurai's wife to both Tajoumaru and her husband in the Woodcutter's real testimony after both refuse to fight over her. Who saw that coming?

* RuleOfThree: There are three characters for the sign above the Rashōmon gate saying Rashōmon, there are three settings in the movie (the forest, the courtyard and Rashōmon gate), three people delivered a testimony in the courtyard, there are three people at Rashōmon gate discussing the stories of the samurai's death.

* SilkHidingSteel: Tajoumaru's telling has him tell of the Wife trying to fight him off with a dagger and says he was attracted by this fierce spirit before he rapes her. While the Wife's telling has her not fit this much bolder character Tajoumaru stated of her, none of the other stories explicitly contradict that she tried to fight him off as they take place after the rape.

* ThirdPersonPerson: Tajoumaru speaks a little like this.
-->"Tajoumaru fell off?"

* UnreliableNarrator: One of the most famous examples of this trope in film. All of the eyewitnesses are unreliable due to personal biases and ulterior motives, even [[spoiler: the Woodcutter]], as they tend to portray themselves in a better light and the other eyewitnesses as villains when recounting the events, resulting in four contradictory stories. The film even spawned a term called the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect Rashomon Effect]], which acknowledges how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be.

* WoundedGazelleGambit: Mentioned by the cynical commoner as a common ploy by women, [[spoiler: used by the Wife and/or the samurai's telling of themselves within their stories if they lied, accused of toward the samurai's wife by the samurai and Tajoumaru within the woodcutter's story, leading both of them to reject her]].

%%* BadassBoast: Tajoumaru's entire story is this. - ZCE

* SympatheticMurderer: The woman tries to paint herself as one.

* TitleDrop: The [[VisualTitleDrop name of the gate]] where [[ThePlace the movie takes place]] is Rashōmon and written in Chinese characters on a sign at the top of it as a shot shows. Rashōmon gate is explicitly stated by the characters later in the story, but averts this trope as the dialogue gives it little fanfare.

* UnbuiltTrope: The film actually deconstructs many aspects of [[RashomonPlot the oft-imitated plot structure]] [[TropeNamer that it lends its name to]]. Instead of using its famous "Three contradictory flashbacks" format as a simple plot gimmick (like most of its imitators do), it's a deeply philosophical character study that uses the format as a vehicle for discussing human beings' [[SelfServingMemory inherent inability to tell the truth]], examining the moral implications of this idea in full. At one point, one character even concludes that almost all of mankind's evils arise from their attempts to avoid confronting the truth by lying to themselves. By the end, the story has ceased to be about a murder trial at all, and become the story of said character's struggle to regain his faith in humanity. Notably, the traditional "final true flashback" (which has grown into a common conclusion for {{Rashomon Plot}}s) is also strongly hinted to be another lie. [[spoiler: We're initially led to believe that the Woodcutter (a neutral witness to the murder) is the only one telling the truth...until it turns out that he may have stolen the murder weapon]].

* AbsenceOfEvidence: One of the final reveals is that the Woodcutter, who at that point is the only person the viewer would be inclined to believe entirely, [[spoiler: stole a valuable dagger mentioned by all the other witnesses even though he'd specifically denied seeing it. This is what causes the commoner to suss it all out and mock him]].

** The deceased samurai is built around making his victimhood and hatred for others most apparent. The result is that Tajōmaru is a violent thug with some ethics who is told by the wife, here a full blown villain, to kill her husband. He, a noble samurai, is so crushed by the betrayal to where he is DrivenToSuicide.
** [[spoiler: The woodcutter, who sees the absolute worst in humanity, portrays the characters as the worst versions of themselves, with Tajōmaru as a perverted, moronic bum, the wife a woman in the midst of a mental breakdown drawn from disillusionment with her husband, and the husband a misogynistic {{Jerkass}} who dies begging for his life.]]

* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:The husband in the woodcutter's story is a misogynist who cruelly tells his wife to go kill herself after her possible rape by Tajomaru.]]
* BabiesEverAfter: [[spoiler:The movie's sole high-note amongst the lies, cruelty, and confusion rampant in it is the discovery of an [[DoorstopBaby orphaned baby]] and the Woodcutter's pledge to raise it like another one of his children]].

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The true events of what transpired to kill the Samurai are still in doubt, the case's ruling is never stated and it is unknown if the Woodcutter ever bothered with coming out with what he supposedly saw to the court, but the Woodcutter altruistically takes the [[DoorstopBaby abandoned baby]] to raise as another one of his children, which restores the faith of him and the Priest in humanity]].
* BreakingSpeech: The commoner decries Woodcutter's assertions that [[spoiler:stealing the kimono with the child]] is evil by pointing out that he has reasoned the [[spoiler:Woodcutter stole the valuable pearl inlaid knife]] that was mentioned by the other testimonies but unaccounted for in the Woodcutter's story.
* CardCarryingVillain: Tajoumaru portrays himself as a unrepentant murderer and rapist, laughing evilly throughout his testimony. The other testimonies subvert this trope and paint him as a scared, pathetic, only-somewhat-thuggish bum.

* ChekhovsGun: All three of the stories told by the three individuals involved in some way involve the woman's ornate dagger, but none of them explain why the woodcutter didn't find it when he found the body. When the woodcutter explains what he saw of the affair, the dagger doesn't appear at all. Eventually, the Commoner figures out what is going on: [[spoiler:the woodcutter stole the dagger after everyone else had died or left]].

* DeathGlare: The Samurai's wife's reason for slaying her husband after her rape. It frightened her so much, the only way to stop it was taking the dagger and killing him.

* DespairEventHorizon: The woodcutter and ''especially'' the priest have suffered such after the trial, as the constant lies of the witnesses have caused them to lose all faith in humanity. [[spoiler:The woodcutter's choice to adopt an abandoned child restores it.]]

* EmpathicEnvironment: The immensely heavy rain which [[GrayRainOfDepression symbolizes the woodcutter and priest's despair]] clears up as the woodcutter makes a decision which restores their faith in humanity.

* EvilLaugh: Tajoumaru, the Bandit, all throughout his testimony. It counts as an AnnoyingLaugh, too. In [[spoiler:the Woodcutter's actual testimony, from the Woman -- either she's laughing at the Bandit's failure to kill her husband, or is laughing bitterly about the Bandit's feelings not being true and the fact that her "honorable samurai" is a wimp. Take your pick]].

* FailedASpotCheck: The court should have been able to deduce whether the man was more likely to have been killed by the sword or the dagger by looking at the size and depth of the entry wound. That would have ruled out at least one of the three [[spoiler: / four]] different stories about what happened and made things a bit more comprehensible to the people in attendance.

* FridgeLogic: This is actually [[IntendedAudienceReaction a main point of the film]] -- every testimony contains inconsistencies, like the Woodcutter walking around in a forest obviously ''not'' intent on cutting wood when he said otherwise, a trained samurai overpowered by a filthy, obviously untrained bandit, the Bandit ''not'' acting like the thug he claimed to be in a testimony, the Samurai acting like a scared civilian in a fight for his life, and so on. [[invoked]]

* GoryDiscretionShot: We never get a view of how either the sword or the dagger [[spoiler:kills the husband]], or of the corpse thereafter.
* HeroicBSOD: The Woodcutter and the Priest are not exactly the heroes of the story (although, from a certain viewpoint, they are the closest this movie gets to actual heroes), but they both seem to be suffering this at the beginning of the film. [[spoiler:After relating his version of events, the Woodcutter is blasted by the commoner about the pearl inlaid knife, originally wielded by the Samurai's Wife; this results in the Woodcutter experiencing BSOD and leads to the admission "I'm the one who should be ashamed. I don't understand my own soul."]]

* IfICantHaveYou: Tajoumaru threatens to kill the samurai's wife if she won't marry him [[spoiler: in the Woodcutter's version.]]

* LaughingMad: [[spoiler:During the Woodcutter's real testimony, the Samurai's wife breaks out in hysterics, at one point. One possible interpretation of the Wife's laughter within the Woodcutter's telling, as both Tajoumaru and her husband outright rejected her, or that they're both too cowardly to win her affection]].

* MurderTheHypotenuse: [[spoiler:Set up by the Wife in the Woodcutter's story, who says the decision is not hers in response to Tajoumaru's begging for her to marry him and frees her husband from his bonds, but does not outright turn Tajoumaru down. They both flat-out disagree with starting such a thing over her, but they later do fight when she mocks them both as not being men by the samurai's unwillingness to avenge his wife's virtue and Tajoumaru's refusal to fight for his desires]].

* RealityIsUnrealistic: During the bandit Tajoumaru's testimony, he boasts that he crossed blades over twenty times with the samurai in the course of their duel. This is all movie fighting; in a real sword fight they would cross far fewer times. A very realistic example of such is performed by Kyūzō early on in ''Film/SevenSamurai'' - and shown in the [[spoiler:Woodcutter's testimony - the two men spend more time trying to desperately dodge and read each other's motions, and when they swing, they hit empty air.]]

* RestoredMyFaithInHumanity: The Priest by the Woodcutter offering to take and care for the orphaned baby like another child of his own; he names this trope almost word for word.
* RewatchBonus: [[spoiler: Once the victim's spirit mentions the dagger, the woodcutter becomes visibly unnerved...]]

* {{Seppuku}}: According to the medium, [[spoiler:the husband committed honorable suicide this way with the wife's dagger]].

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Idealism is represented by the priest and the woodcutter, who believe they've lost all faith in human nature from the conflicting stories they've heard indicated some very bold lies ''somewhere'', and the commoner represents cynicism by laughing off the supposed badness and selfishness of every human at the end before suiting words to deeds by stealing the clothes around a baby abandoned in the ruins of the shrine. [[spoiler: The Woodcutter's willingness to take the child in and raise it despite his own poverty -- "I already have six children, what's one more?" -- restores both men's faith.]]
* SmallNameBigEgo: Tajoumaru's story largely has him say how totally cool he is... [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation assuming he was lying]]. The other stories, and [[spoiler:The Woodcutter's true story]] paint him as extraordinary pathetic, and scared.

* ToneShift: Tone changes with the testimonies. In the Bandit's story, he is dirty and the scene resembles a botched crime film; contrast this style with the Woman's story and [[spoiler:the Woodcutter's second testimony]].
* UnbuiltTrope: The film actually deconstructs many aspects of [[RashomonPlot the oft-imitated plot structure]] [[TropeNamer that it lends its name to]]. Instead of using its famous "Three contradictory flashbacks" format as a simple plot gimmick (like most of its imitators do), it's a deeply philosophical character study that uses the format as a vehicle for discussing human beings' [[SelfServingMemory inherent inability to tell the truth]], examining the moral implications of this idea in full. At one point, one character even concludes that almost all of mankind's evils arise from their attempts to avoid confronting the truth by lying to themselves. By the end, the story has ceased to be about a murder trial at all, and become the story of said character's struggle to regain his faith in humanity. Notably, the traditional "final true flashback" (which has grown into a common conclusion for {{Rashomon Plot}}s) is also strongly hinted to be another lie. [[spoiler: We're initially led to believe that the Woodcutter (a neutral witness to the murder) is the only one telling the truth...until it turns out that he may have stolen the murder weapon]].
* UnreliableNarrator: One of the most famous examples of this trope in film. All of the eyewitnesses are unreliable due to personal biases and ulterior motives, even [[spoiler:the Woodcutter]], as they tend to portray themselves in a better light and the other eyewitnesses as villains when recounting the events, resulting in four contradictory stories. The film even spawned a term called the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect Rashomon Effect]], which acknowledges how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be.
* TheUnsolvedMystery: [[spoiler:The film never reveals who actually killed the samurai. Similarly, it is ambiguous whose version of events was the closest to the truth.]]

-->'''Commoner''': So what did you do with the [[spoiler:dagger]]? The [[spoiler:valuable one with the pearl inlay]] that [[spoiler:Tajoumaru]] was talking about?

* WimpFight: In the Woodcutter's version of the duel between the Samurai and the Bandit, they run around swinging desperately at each other with their weapons. It's often taken as one of the hints that his testimony isn't exactly truthful - a trained Samurai wouldn't have done such a thing - but this was how Kurosawa commonly depicted fights. This may be also be explained by the men's mutual unwillingness to fight- and apparent mutual respect for each other- until the Wife goaded them into it.
* WorldHalfFull: [[spoiler:Despite the bleakness of the setting, the despair of the priest and the woodcutter,]] and the nihilist ramblings of the commoner, [[spoiler:the woodcutter's ability to do good, despite having done evil, restores the two men's hope.]] This is shown beautifully in the film's final shot of the temple, showing both the side of it as a burnt out wreck on one side, and the other a still proud place of spiritual worship.
* WoundedGazelleGambit: Mentioned by the cynical commoner as a common ploy by women, [[spoiler:used by the Wife and/or the samurai's telling of themselves within their stories if they lied, accused of toward the samurai's wife by the samurai and Tajoumaru within the woodcutter's story, leading both of them to reject her]].

* {{Seppuku}}: According to the medium, [[spoiler:the husband committed honorable suicide this way with the wife's dagger]].
* SpitefulSpit: In the woodcutter's account, the wife spits into the bandit's face when he refuses to fight for her.
* ThePlace: A sign above the ruins reads "Rashōmon".
* RapeDiscretionShot: The scene cuts from the wife dropping the knife and giving in to the bandit's kiss to him at court explaining that he scored with her and then back to the flashback where he is about to leave the scene.
* GoryDiscretionShot: We never get a view of how either the sword or the dagger [[spoiler:kills the husband]], or of the corpse thereafter.
* DefiledForever:
** Laid out clearly by the husband in the woodcutter's story when he outright refuses to fight for her and notes that his horse is more valuable now that she has been with two men.
** In her own testimony, the wife mentions how she tried to [[DrivenToSuicide commit suicide]] by drowning because of the shame of being a victim of rape.

* ToneShift: Tone changes with the testimonies. In the Bandit's story, he is dirty and the scene resembles a botched crime film; contrast this style with the Woman's story and [[spoiler:the Woodcutter's second testimony]].

* {{Minimalism}}: Only eight actors, two only seen briefly, and three locations, four counting a shot of the police finding an injured Tajomaru. The temple set is rather expensive, but that's about it.

* EmpathicEnvironment: The immensely heavy rain which [[GrayRainOfDepression symbolizes the woodcutter and priest's despair]] clears up as the woodcutter makes a decision which restores their faith in humanity.

* TitleDrop: The [[VisualTitleDrop name of the gate]] where [[ThePlace the movie takes place]] is Rashōmon and written in Chinese characters on a sign at the top of it as a shot shows. Rashōmon gate is explicitly stated by the characters later in the story, but averts this trope as the dialogue gives it little fanfare.

* WorldHalfFull: [[spoiler:Despite the bleakness of the setting, the despair of the priest and the woodcutter,]] and the nihilist ramblings of the commoner, [[spoiler:the woodcutter's ability to do good, despite having done evil, restores the two men's hope.]] This is shown beautifully in the film's final shot of the temple, showing both the side of it as a burnt out wreck on one side, and the other a still proud place of spiritual worship.

* RiddleForTheAges: We never find out who the murderer is. [[UnbuiltTrope This helps the film to stand out from its many imitators]].

* JidaiGeki: The story is very much set in feudal Japan.

* NoNameGiven: ''Everyone in the film'' other than Tajoumaru. Oddly, in ''In a Grove'', the man and his wife did have names: Takehiro and Masago Kanazawa.
* PeriodPiece: Set in Heian-era Japan.

* AintTooProudToBeg: The husband as Tajōmaru kills him, in the woodcutter's second testimony.

* IDontWantToDie: [[spoiler:The samurai in the woodcutter's story before Tajomaru kills him.]]

* ArtShift: Tone changes with the testimonies. In the Bandit's story, he is dirty and the scene resembles a botched crime film; contrast this style with the Woman's story and [[spoiler:the Woodcutter's second testimony]].
* BabiesEverAfter: [[spoiler:The movie's sole high-note amongst the lies, cruelty, and confusion rampant in it is the discovery of an orphaned baby and the Woodcutter's pledge to raise it like another one of his children]].
* BadassBoast: Tajoumaru's entire story is this.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The true events of what transpired to kill the Samurai are still in doubt, the case's ruling is never stated and it is unknown if the Woodcutter ever bothered with coming out with what he supposedly saw to the court, but the Woodcutter altruistically takes the abandoned baby to raise as another one of his children, which restores the faith of him and the Priest in humanity]].

* CentralTheme: The whole point of the film is that everybody who witnessed the crime has some motive to distort their account of what happened.

* CrapsackWorld: One of Kurosawa's first depictions of feudal Japan which strays into this trope. The characters' disillusionment with humanity is as much about the events themselves and how, in a world fraught with so much death and violence, even a simple murder case is something which people refuse to give a clear answer to.

** What the Samurai (or medium "channeling" him) claims to have done in his story, after witnessing the unfaithfulness of his wife.
** The wife also claimed to have tried and failed to drown herself after running away from the grove.

* HimeCut: The Samurai's Wife.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: The Samurai's wife to both Tajoumaru and her husband in the Woodcutter's real testimony. Who saw that coming?

* RuleOfSymbolism: The immensely heavy rain which symbolises the woodcutter and priest's despair clears up as the woodcutter makes a decision which restores their faith in humanity.

* TitleDrop: The name of the gate where the movie takes place is Rashōmon and written in Chinese characters on a sign at the top of it as a shot shows. Rashōmon gate is explicitly stated by the characters later in the story, but averts this trope as the dialogue gives it little fanfare.

* UnbuiltTrope: The film actually deconstructs many aspects of [[RashomonPlot the oft-imitated plot structure]] [[TropeNamer that it lends its name to]]. Instead of using its famous "Three contradictory flashbacks" format as a simple plot gimmick (like most of its imitators do), it's a deeply philosophical character study that uses the format as a vehicle for discussing human beings' inherent inability to tell the truth, examining the moral implications of this idea in full. At one point, one character even concludes that almost all of mankind's evils arise from their attempts to avoid confronting the truth by lying to themselves. By the end, the story has ceased to be about a murder trial at all, and become the story of said character's struggle to regain his faith in humanity. Notably, the traditional "final true flashback" (which has grown into a common conclusion for {{Rashomon Plot}}s) is also strongly hinted to be another lie. [[spoiler: We're initially led to believe that the Woodcutter (a neutral witness to the murder) is the only one telling the truth...until it turns out that he may have stolen the murder weapon]].

* TokenGoodTeammate: The priest is the sole character in the film who had no evidence of any wrongdoing shown (unless you count the spirit medium.)

* RealityIsUnrealistic:
** It is surprisingly difficult to capture rain on film (it's one reason most Hollywood rain sequences are shot in the dark) so Kurosawa's team had to use enormous volumes of water (delivered using fire hoses) and eventually resorted to dyeing the water black--tricks he later reused while filming ''Film/{{Ikiru}}''.
** During the bandit Tajoumaru's testimony, he boasts that he crossed blades over twenty times with the samurai in the course of their duel. This is all movie fighting; in a real sword fight they would cross far fewer times. A very realistic example of such is performed by Kyūzō early on in ''Film/SevenSamurai'' - and shown in the [[spoiler:Woodcutter's testimony - the two men spend more time trying to desperately dodge and read each other's motions, and when they swing, they hit empty air.]]