How 'Facts' are Spun to Make Whites serve Jews and the Other — Spin than the Fact is More Crucial to Political Control, i.e. anything can be spun to push anything

The spin is more important than the fact in political control. Thus, the 'facts' of white superiority, white equality, and white inferiority can all be used to make white people tolerate, welcome, celebrate, 'include', and serve the Other. The current order manipulates all three modes among whites to make them serve Jews and/or non-whites(usually as proxies of Jews).

1. How white superiority is used to make whites serve Jews and non-whites. Whites are made to feel special, rich, powerful, and accomplished. They are great whereas so many other peoples are pathetic, especially those starving or diseased black Africans. Therefore, superior white people should be decent and take care of all those non-whites by allowing mass-immigration and providing endless super-aid. The White Knight Syndrome. Jews play on this psychology too. Jews paint themselves as forever Holocaust Victims, and great-good whites must step up to the plate to save Jews from 'new nazis', such as Iranians and anyone who dares to criticize Jewish Power or Zionism. There is also an aspect of white superiority in LGBT stuff, i.e. whites are 'more evolved' than the rest of humanity because they are most enthusiastic about queer culture, therefore whites should guide the world to celebrate homosexuality and trannies. So, feelings of white superiority are made to serve non-whites or to spread Jewish-concocted 'Western Values' via globo-imperialism. (Globo-Homomania is totally the brainchild of Jewish supremacists.) Of course, no one explicitly says whites are superior, but the implication of White-Knight-ism is based on feelings of enlightened superiority. Even 'white guilt' is intrinsically white superiorist in that it judges whites by a higher standard. All of humanity practiced slavery and waged murderous wars. So, why are whites judged more harshly? Because they deemed as higher beings and should have known better. "Oh, how could the white race have done such a thing?" If Arabs, Africans, and Asians did it, oh well, that was because they didn't know any better. But whites? As higher beings, they should have known better.

2. How white equality is used to make whites serve Jews and non-whites. Whites are told that all races are equal or that race is just a fantasy. There is just common humanity, and therefore, it doesn't matter if white world is demographically taken over by non-whites or if whites mix with other races. Whites and non-whites, they are not only equal but virtually the same. It's just humans and more humans. So, whites should welcome mass immigration and be either demographically replaced or miscegenated out of existence; it doesn't matter because whatever happens, it's just humans replacing or mixing with humans. As whites are the global minority, such an attitude would make white world subordinate to or supplanted by non-whites in the long run. What will happen to Europe if 100 millions of black Africans go there? Anyway, white equality as currently understood doesn't bestow white people the equal right to survive as race and culture(as Jews in Israel do). It's not about universal nationalism. Rather, whites must be erased like Palestinians and accept it as a 'good thing' in the name of equality.

3. How white inferiority is used to make whites serve Jews and non-whites. Whites are made to feel that the Other, especially Jews and blacks, are so awesome that whites should worship and serve them. If we go by images than ideas(or idolatry than ideology), the current Western Culture is totally racial supremacist in entertainment and emphasis. Sports, sex entertainment, and music are heavily about black dominance, black power, black prowess, and black whatever. Blacks are so highly prized that even black lies are favored over truth. Take BLM, based on a total lie but a quasi-religion among so many foolish whites. When it comes to sports, diversity has led to something like 'monoversity', or monopolization by one group in a diversified world. California is very diverse with a white minority population, lots of Asians and many more browns, but its sports teams are heavily black. Europe celebrates diversity and has many more Muslims and Asians than in the past, but its sports are turning more and more black, with France leading the way. So, diversity doesn't lead to more diversity at the top but to domination by one group. Today, the typical European Sprint Events have nearly all blacks(representing France, UK, Holland, etc.) 'Monoversity' also results in brainy fields. Technology is an open field in welcoming diverse talents from all over the world, but the top are dominated by Jews/whites, Hindus, and yellows. And finance sector around much of the world is dominated by Jews. It's not about more people having equal possession and control of wealth but about Jews gaining more financial access/control over other nations. Across Southeast Asia, diaspora Chinese dominate much of finance and economics. So, the promise of diversity hasn't led to diversity at the top but a kind of 'monoversity' where more diverse peoples come under the domination of a single or few groups. Globalism promotes diversity as equal opportunity for more diverse peoples, but even if it were truly meritocratic, innate genetic differences turns meritocracy into 'monoversity' of one group or few groups hogging most of the trophies or prizes. But it's actually worse because Jewish Power at the center of globalism rigs the game to favor Jews and their allies/puppets over much of the world(Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, 'uppity' whites who believe whiteness is okay). Domination by meritocracy isn't enough for Jews. They must also rig the game by having the US sanction Russia and Iran(and any nation that does business with them). Also, Jews, who once used to take pride as champions of civil liberties, now use media monopoly, platform monopoly, financial service monopoly, and all kinds of lawyer tricks to shut down speech and discussion that goes against Jewish power and its favored Narratives. At this point, ACLU is just a wing of AIPAC. In a way, equality of opportunity allows for even greater manifestations of racial superiority. Allowing equal opportunity in sports led to black supremacy. Allowing equal opportunity in academia, media, and finance led to Jewish domination. Even as 'anti-racist' whites so often point to black success in sports and music as proof of 'progressive' triumph over white supremacy, they overlook the implications of black supremacy. After all, if blacks totally beat whites in sports, it may disprove white or 'Aryan' supremacy but it also suggests black supremacy, at least in sports. And if blacks are more 'athletic' and rhythmic in their music that excites people, then blacks must have certain advantages in sound & sensuality. What is 'liberal' rock culture but an idolization and imitation of blacks? It's about white sensibility under the spell of black sensuality. Dave Marsh the famous critic always posed as a 'liberal' or even 'leftist' who denounces white 'racism', but his entire worldview can be boiled down to whites should revere blacks because blacks are so much more awesome than whites. There's a book called GOOD BOOTY(by Ann Powers) that seems to be about how whites gained so much from the bouncing black butt. And what is all this Philosemitism about? It's a case of Heil Hillel. If the West is about equality and 'anti-racism', why is its current sacred law, "Thou shalt serve Jews and Zion uber alles, especially Palestinians and Arabs?" It's based on the notion that Jews are so awesome as businessmen, thinkers, entertainers, and etc. that white people should get on their knees and worship and serve the REAL SUPERIOR RACE. In other words, inferior whites should serve superior Jews. Now, how is it possible that white superiority, white equality, and white inferiority, though contradictory with one another, all serve the same purpose? Because 'facts' or assumptions are secondary to the spin they are given. Under current dogma and narrative control, all three modes have been spun to make whites serve the Other, especially Jews and blacks. Heads I win, tails you lose. It's like the story of the Talmudic Rabbi, the goy, and the chimney. Regardless of the scenario or situation, the Jewish guy comes out on top. Different 'facts', but same spin: "Jew is right, goy is wrong" https://aleph.org/resources/the-rabbi-is-in-two-men-come-down-the-same-chimney In Ryunosuke Akutagawa's short story "In the Forest"(basis for Akira Kurosawa's RASHOMON), three people tell three different accounts of the same murder, but in a way, they're telling the same tale as each is driven by ego and vanity. In a similar vein, current whiteness, whether spun as 'superior', 'equal', or 'inferior', is spun to serve Jews and the Other. Whether it's a white knight, white man, or white slave, he exists to protect, welcome, or serve Jews(and their favored allies). Lawyers and pundits know this trick. Whatever the fact, no matter how irrefutable, they spin it to suit their agendas. Whether the truth is white superiority, white equality, or white inferiority, the power of spin is with Jews who spin whiteness around and around to serve Jewish Power. ZIOBOLSHEVIK TAKEOVER; SURVIVAL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

The Lost Connective Links of Our Decadent & Degenerate Society — The Only Remaining 'Value' is Nihilism and Blind Worship of Power & Privilege — There is No Moral Core, just Moral Covers — The Lost Ideal of Virginity and the Rise of Whore-Moms

Civilization is turning into a trash heap because the connective links have been lost. Consider the cells in our bodies. Why are we different from single-cell organisms? A single cell organism like an amoeba lives only for itself. In contrast, all the cells in the human body must coordinate together. No cell in the human body can exist or live alone. It only has meaning in relation to all the other cells in the body. A single brain cell is nothing. It only has meaning in relation to other brain cells, and the cells in the brains have meaning in relation to cells in the heart, cells in the lungs, cells in the bloodstream, and cells throughout the nervous system.

Civilization is like a vast organism. Each person has meaning in relation to the larger society. Without such link, his life lacks meaning and larger purpose. What is the difference between a thug/criminal and a soldier? Both commit acts of violence. The difference is the thug uses violence only for self-gain. He is like a lone animal that attacks only to serve itself. In contrast, a soldier fights for the good of the team, the army, the society, nation. Ideally, he fights for a just cause or for the survival of the community. He is willing to sacrifice himself for the good of others with whom he identifies. Even in death, he hangs his hope on the larger community commemorating the heroism of people like himself, and in a sense, something of him lives on as long as the memory is kept alive. It’s like the Toshiro Mifune character in Akira Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI gains larger meaning by using his fighting skills to defend a village of farmers under attack by bandits. He could have been a petty thief serving only himself, but he chose to fight and die for something nobler and worthier. And the thief in KAGEMUSHA gains new meaning through attachment to the Takeda Clan. Prior to his role of service to a higher cause/power, he was just some lone thief with nothing to live or die for except petty interests. It’s like the outlaws in THE WILD BUNCH(by Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah) gain a bit of redemption when they put their lives on the line for the principle of loyalty. Prior to their awakening and resolve, they’d been little more than killers and thieves. So, the difference between thug violence and soldier/policeman violence is the thug only thinks of himself whereas the solider or police officer thinks of the larger community and higher ideals and/or just cause.

Unlike animals that live for brute survival and most primal needs, humans have developed complex morality, values, and organizations. Being part of something bigger, our lives gain meaning in terms of morals, values, duties & obligations, legacy, and posterity. Moral civilization is about posterity, whore culture is about the posterior.
What goes for violence also goes for sex. Sex is animal drive and natural act. But humans are more than animals. Non-black races can be more than savages. So, they have found deeper meaning and purpose in sex. They learned to devise rules and laws to tame and control the biology of sex. Animals don’t know sex leads to new life. They just go into heat and hump one another. Negroes do know sex leads to new life, but Negro men don’t care to take care of their kids. They just want to go around and bang as many ho’s as possible and leave it to OTHERS to raise their kids. (And Cuck Christians and Prog-Whites, by indulging bad black behavior as the White Man's Burden & Blame, encourage more blacks to act nasty and crazy.)

Unlike blacks, the civilized races(at least those who haven't fallen to decadence and degeneracy fueled by demented popular culture) don’t see sex as mere animal horniness or wild debauchery. They see it as a natural drive/process that leads to new life and all the attendant blessings and burdens. Also, sex is seen as part of something bigger: Search for love, courtship, marriage, new life, parenting, acculturation, and etc. So, sex isn’t just for sex but part of something broader, deeper, and more meaningful. Without such mindset, civilization is impossible to create or sustain. Civilization isn’t about petty individuals indulging themselves obliviously to the larger needs of society. It’s about building links between various facets of life and society-as-a-whole to construct and preserve a system of meaning, worth, and higher values. Society links a warrior’s violence with duty, cause, heroism, and sacrifice. Civilization links sexual desire with love, marriage, parenting, children, and posterity. When such links are severed, warriors are reduced to thugs and mercenaries. And sexual desire just turns animal and crude. It is just for the pleasure of the moment. When things fall apart, the morally-minded seek to do the right thing to restore order whereas the nihilistic take advantage of the chaos to do as they please. While some people have an innate sense of morality, others are naturally prone to nihilism. Notice how blacks tend to riot and loot whenever the chance arises. It's almost as if they feel most at home in a savage state-of-nature. And then, there are lots of people who can go either way. They have good in them but also some bad. In the short story RASHOMON, a man finds himself without a purpose in a collapsing world. He teeters between morality and nihilism, finally choosing the latter. As most of us have both good and bad in us, we can go either way, though most whites and Asians will tend toward the good whereas most blacks will choose the bad under trying circumstances.

Matters are all the more dangerous today because the hubris of animal drives is no longer checked(at least immediately) by the nemesis of consequences. By the ruthless laws of nature, a woman who fools around too much will become pregnant or become diseased(and die). Being pregnant, she will have to sober up and take care of the kid. But in modern society, a woman can rely on artificial means of the Pill, condoms, and abortion to free herself of the consequences of her behavior. So, she can act wild and excessive without nature's check on her thoughtlessness. If she gets a disease, she can be treated with antibiotics. And even if she does decide to have the kid, the state will pay for child care and provide her with everything. So, female behavior can get totally out of control, and it’s gone totally nuts in the black community, what with black mothers even raising their kids to 'twerk'. Advanced technology enabled people to act even wilder and more savage than they would in the jungle wild. And this craziness is spreading to white and Asian communities too.

It should be no surprise that Homomania made huge gains in recent times. It is due to the de-linking of the natural drives from morality, culture, and nobler themes of society. There was a time when marriage linked together nature, morality, culture, family, spirituality, and children. But as the links have been cut, there is only the hedonism of the individual. So, everything is judged according to what kind of pleasure it brings to the Individual. So, if vain homo individuals demand their 'happiness' with ‘gay marriage’, then they must be allowed to ‘marry’ too. This is what happens when ‘marriage’ is de-linked from nature, morality, & culture and is, instead, regarded merely as a jolly 'choice' or 'right' of individuals in pursuit of hedonistic ‘happiness’ as vanity and 'pride'.
Worse, a disconnected society will come to favor power and privilege as the highest goods. As nature is no longer restrained, controlled, and guided by morality, integrity, and truth, it runs wild in pursuit of unfettered power and domination. The post-moral West is all about power and money. As Jews have most wealth and influence, they can rewrite the rules and even bring about something like 'gay marriage'. Why not? Jews got the most power, and a nihilistic society worships power. If Jews want it, they get it. (Notice that so-called Conservatives, so worshipful of Jewish Power, did NOTHING to stop Homomania. It's telling that the main donor to the GOP is Sheldon Adelson, the sleazy casino oligarch.) And as homos are the favorite ally of Jews and have plenty of power & privilege themselves, they can do as they like and demand that we follow along. And so many people go along because, deep down inside, the only thing they worship is power and privilege. And why are blacks allowed to do as they please and run wild and act crazy? Because a nihilistic society worships naked displays of power, and so many people in the West now worship Negroes as athletes, rappers, and studs. Just like black college athletes are protected from legal issues for their prowess on the field, the West indulges whatever blacks do because blacks are deemed 'badass' and 'cool'. Of course, Jews, homos, and blacks don't publicly claim to be about nihilism and power-worship. If anything, they make a lot of moral-sounding noises about 'antisemitism', 'racism', and 'homophobia', but their arguments are not true morality but distortions made possible by an excess of power and corruption. Globo-Homomania cannot be true morality. It can be a form of sham-morality only in an utterly degenerate society where the Good is determined not by genuine understanding and conscience but by deceptions & decrees of the ruling class that only really cares for power and privilege. The current US is not about having a moral core; it's about using moral covers to excuse the vile and vicious behaviors of Jews, blacks, and homos. Consider what Jussie Smollett was allowed to get away with, and consider how Google algorithms undermine the search for truth about his 'hate hoax', really a hateful crime against white Americans. And consider how the Media and Academia have made 'pride' nearly synonymous with homosexuality and trannies. Now, I'm sure those into Globo-Homomania sincerely feel themselves to be 'good' and 'moral' people who are all about 'tolerance' and etc., but such delusions only go to show how the Power can distort and deform hearts & minds of people who, under normal conditions of sanity and sobriety, would know better. A society that forces people to say "I love Big Brother" is bad enough. At least those saying it would know they're being forced. But a society where people are made to say "I love Big Brother" with heartfelt sincerity has truly gone over the cliff where decency and integrity are concerned. The existing Power would be such that it can not only force people to say or do the insane and demented but convince them that they are doing something sane and moral, even 'spiritual', what with so many churches being draped with the 'gay rainbow' flag.

So many women are now sexually degenerate, utterly corrupted by the Power that now equates whore-behavior with empowerment. (No wonder the Power used Camille Paglia to push the idolization of the skank.) They no longer see sexual desire as a link in the chain of love, courtship, marriage, family, parenting, children, and posterity. It’s just a Lady Gaga or Lena-Dunham thing where it’s just about momentary orgasms, howling like morons at nightclubs, dancing by sticking their asses to be rubbed by male groins in public, and etc. And there is no shame… or shame has been repressed because Mammon decrees that nothing is more shameful than to feel shame about surrendering to debauchery. Shame the shame and de-link people from the larger themes and meanings of a moral community. Just tell them that what matters most is the individual’s pleasure of the moment.
Or worship whoever has the most money or power. Consider how the current 'leftism' is all about corporate power and wealth. It's about the supposedly 'progressive' support of global corporations that monopolize everything and just get richer and richer. Today's supposed 'leftists' are more likely to champion Mark Zuckerberg and Google oligarchs than Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, the whistleblowers against the power. They are more likely to support oligarchic suppression of free speech that speaks truth to Jewish Power, exposes Globo-Homo degeneracy for what it is, and frankly discusses black problems of crime and mayhem.

Of course, moments pass, and people grow old. And when all their moments were lived only for the moment, they have nothing to call their own. Moments are like bricks. If you can see the bigger picture, you stack each moment like a brick in the building of a house. Over time, all those moments come together to constitute a meaningful house of purpose and memories. But, if you see each brick as just something to toss into the air for the fun of it, all those bricks become strewn and lost, without rhyme or reasons, and there is no house at the end.

The de-linking of natural drives from culture, meaning, morality, and posterity will be the undoing of civilization.

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Ideally, people shouldn’t throw away their virginity on some punk or floozy.
It should be lost with or offered to the right lover/spouse. It used to be the norm that virginity was prized and highly regarded as something precious. It was something you guarded and kept, especially if you were a woman, and finally offered to the one you truly loved.

But then, virginity came to be seen as something like a disease, a plague. It had to be gotten rid of as fast as possible. It was like the cooties.
So, we have teens eager to lose it as fast as possible with someone they don’t even like, often while they're drunk and semi-conscious... just so they can say "I lost it" to their peers who are similarly brainwashed with degenerate Pop Culture. So, some teen guy will roll in the hay with some fat ho’ just to brag that he's now some kind of stud. Or the teen girl will lose it with some half-wit moron and make a fuss about how she lost it.

How did this happen? How did we go FROM a society that prized virginity as something precious that should be offered to the one you love TO a society that regards virginity as social disease, something one should be ashamed of? Pop Culture?

For most of human history — at least outside Negro-verse of wild jungle-bunner behavior in Africa and America — , the ideal was to hold virginity as something special to finally offer to the one you love.

Take the concept of ‘deflowering’. So, the virginal poon was like a pretty flower and it was to be offered for deflowering only to the worthy gardener. But now the only concept is ‘plowing’. A guy will say he met some ho’ and ‘plowed’ her fat arse.

I compare the generation of my friends’ parents and my friends, and there is no comparison. Whether Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Italian, Asian, Muslim, Hindu, or whatever, the parents all got married, raised families, and grew up. But so many of my friends are immature infantile degenerate tards forever. Also, among my parents generation, it was often the case that their husbands were the first and only man the mothers did it with. There was special bonding and loyalty. But among the daughters, I see a lot of whore behavior. And some of them got ugly tattoos, and they dress like hoors. Now, what kind of mothers will they be to their kids? It will be like kids growing up with prostitute moms. Most of my friends had moms whom they respected. They saw their moms as having been respectable women before they met their hubbies and had kids. But when their daughters become moms, their kids will grow up seeing their tattoo mom-whores as someone who banged tons of guys before they finally settled down with some husband who might not even stick around. It’s all shudder-worthy. What degeneration of society. It’s like the world is becoming Negro-globalized or Neglobalized.

A Response to Trevor Lynch’s Analysis of RASHOMON by Akira Kurosawa

https://www.counter-currents.com/2017/10/rashomon-and-realism/

Trevor Lynch(or Greg Johnson?):

Rashomon is the story of a rape and murder committed in 12th-century Japan. Or, rather, it is four radically divergent stories of the same rape and murder. Rashomon is constantly trotted out by coffee-house intellectuals as an illustration of the subjectivity of our perceptions and the relativity of truth. But this is a superficial misreading of the film.
The stories in Rashomon do not diverge because of the ineluctable subjectivity of all claims about the world. The witnesses are simply lying. Furthermore, if we pay attention to their testimony, the characters of the witnesses, and the enduring facts of human psychology, we can reconstruct what really happened. Finally, Rashomon does not just presuppose that reality is objective and knowable, but that there is a moral order that is objective and knowable as well, an objective ought as well as an objective is. In short, Rashomon is not a relativist film but a deeply realist one.

I have to disagree. First, Akira Kurosawa's film adaptation deviates significantly from Ryunosuke Akutagawa's short story that is tempered & measured in its narrative and construction. It revolves around an extreme incident -- rape and murder/suicide -- yet the story is relayed almost without emotional content. Akutagawa maintains a zen-like distance and stillness despite the emotionally charged confessions of the three people involved. This has a flattening effect in pressing all three narratives into a panel of patterns, like glass slides beneath a microscope.

In the short story, there is no account of the violent encounter by the woodcutter who only bears witness to having found the body. The three accounts are by the bandit, samurai, and the wife. As such, Kurosawa drastically changed the nature of the story by inventing a fourth account by the woodcutter that undermines the crystal clarity of the original story. Imagine three crystals. They are different in shape and receives light differently. And yet, they are made of the same material, transparent, and penetrable by light. And in the original story, what matters is NOT what happened physically -- we can never know for sure -- but what happens psychologically. Three different characters tell three contrasting stories, and yet, the all three are fueled by the same egotism and emotions in relation to the norms of Japanese culture. Different stories but same emotional motivations. So, on a deeper level, they are telling the same 'story' for each story serves the same emotional needs of the fragile ego.

After all, what is strange about the confessions is that all three people confess to the crime. Usually, the accused say "I'm innocent and someone else did it." In RASHOMON, each of the involved confess to the killing. Bandit says he killed the samurai. Woman says she killed her husband. Samurai says he killed himself, suicide as honor and self-pity. Though the accounts are different, they are driven by the same need for self-justification in a strict shame culture. Bandit is willing to be hanged but wants to die with reputation. He tells the judge that he gave the samurai a fair fight and won with superior swordsmanship. It was not murder but a duel. Thus, the bandit wants to be remembered as a real man, not just some punk who killed an innocent helpless man bound in rope. He is willing to face execution but with pride.
As for the woman, she says she was wronged by both men. She was raped by the bandit though she resisted. And then her husband accused her with his contemptuous gaze. It was bad enough to be raped, but it was worse for her husband to put the blame on her, as if it was her fault that she was ravaged by the filthy bandit. So, she couldn't take the injustice and shame, and she killed the husband. She was the victim of both bandit and husband.
Then, the husband's account is conveyed through the shaman. Through the medium channeling a voice from the netherworld, we hear the husband say he killed himself. By his account, he was the victim of both the bandit and his wife. The bandit fooled him and tied him up and raped his wife. And then, the wife told the bandit to kill her husband so they could run away together. So, he wasn't wronged only by the bandit but by his own wife. Unable to deal with this shame, he killed himself.

All three accounts are different in narrative detail but they tell the same psychological truth. All three stories are driven by the need for ego's pride, self-justification, and social assent.

And for the meaning of Akutagawa's story to hold, we only need those three accounts. The fourth account by the woodcutter complicates, even confounds, the original meaning of the story. Also, it is topsy-turvy tragi-comic in spirit, what with the woman freaking out, the men flipping out, and fighting like two clowns out of fright than fury. It rather undermines the purity of Akutagawa's philoso-poetics. As Jonathan Rosenbaum's capsule review states, the meaning of the story goes from an emphasis on psychological truth to physical lie. (To be sure, Rosenbaum also seems unaware that the fourth account by the woodcutter was NOT in the original story.)

https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/rashomon/Film?oid=1808252

Akutagawa designed the story so that there is no way for us to know who really did what. But that very uncertainty is essential in order for us to notice the certainty of something deeper: ego and pride. It could be all of them are lying OR only one is telling the truth but, regardless of who did what, their accounts are fueled by the same psychological need for self-justification and pride. Indeed, this pride is even more important than life in Japanese culture. The bandit and the wife, by confessing the murder, can be put to death. But they fear death less than social opprobrium. Bandit's ego wants it to be known that he was the proud victor. Wife's ego wants it to be known that she was a double-victim, that of bandit and husband. As for the samurai, he would rather say he died at his own hands to redeem his honor than say he was killed by a lowly bandit or by his wife.

Kurosawa's addition of the fourth narrative makes us more aware of the issue of LYING. We know from the woodcutter's reaction when pressed upon by the commoner(who steals the baby's clothes) that he told a lie. We know that for certain because he withdraws in shame when accused about the missing dagger. This element turns the philosophical query of Akutagawa into a kind of medieval mystery of 'who dun it'? But the original concept, like Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA, isn't about what-happened than what-happens-in-the-mind.

Also, only Akutagawa's original vision justifies the priest's pessimism. The priest says the trial shook him to the core, more than any earthquake or disaster. Why? If he was so shook by the fact that people lied, it sounds rather ridiculous. After all, people lie all the time, especially about crimes they're accused of.
No, what makes the story so unnerving is that all three, bandit-wife-samurai, confess to the killing but we still don't know the truth. If three people say, "I'm innocent", that's par for the course. Naturally people tried to avoid blame. But if three people admit 'guilt', what the hell is going on here? And yet, the paradox is the three egos are seeking innocence through guilt. Bandit said he killed the samurai but in a honorable duel. Woman says she killed her husband but because she was wronged by both men. And husband says he killed himself because honor made it impossible for him to face life after humiliation at the hands of not only the bandit but his own wife.

Once the woodcutter's account is thrown into the mix, the focus of the story goes from phenomenological to ontological. Priest's gloomy view of humanity only makes sense in relation to Akutagawa's vision. After all, spiritual men cannot hope to know the certainty of worldly affairs. They are limited like everyone else in terms of senses of sight and sound. But spiritual men, even as they distrust the world of things and flesh, believe in the deeper and redemptive sanctity of the human soul. And yet, the priest is confronted with the problem of soul-itself in RASHOMON since all three characters seem willing to meet their maker. All three speak in redemptive terms of willing to give their lives for the truth. The bandit sounds half-way noble in his willing to face death as a man of pride. The wife seems sympathetic as a woman willing to be put to death as long as the court recognizes her as a poor broken soul wronged by two men. And the husband, speaking from the ghost world, has nothing to lose in terms of life since he's already dead. And yet, he tells a story that makes himself the tragic victim.

This suggests that the priest is confronted not only with deception of the flesh and worldly actions but with deception of the soul itself. If depths of the REDEMPTIVE soul can be so self-deluded and so at odds with certainty, what is a spiritual man or a man of god to believe in or trust?

Kurosawa could have maintained this sense of spiritual crisis, but he concocted a fourth tale by the woodcutter that alters the discourse from a philosophical crisis to sociological question of the problem of human dishonesty. Also, if indeed the priest is so troubled on the spiritual-philosophical level, why would his faith in man be restored by the woodcutter's kindly deed of adopting the abandoned baby? That goodness of deed would still not resolve the crisis of the soul as expounded in the first half of the film.

The difference between Akutagawa and Kurosawa was the former had the courage or nerves to look nihilism in the face without judgement. Not that Akutagawa welcomed nihilism but he saw it for what it is in a world that is what it is: ultimately absurd and meaningless.

RASHOMON the film is a combination of two Akutagawa stories: 'Rashomon' and 'In a Grove'. Both are short and concise. 'Rashomon', which is just a few pages, is about a commoner dismissed by his master in a time of social decay and destruction. He has no place to go and finds temporary shelter from rain in a ruined temple. He hears noise from upstairs, and it's not an abandoned baby but an old woman pulling hair from a dead woman. The old woman justifies her putrid act by saying the dead woman was no good in life... whereupon the man kicks the old woman and steals her robe and runs out of the temple. Once racked with anxiety, he now feels free with nihilism. There's no such thing as goodness, everyone is rotten, everyone leeches off everyone, so why shouldn't he? It's a depressing view of life but one that Akutagawa portrays unflinchingly, even coldly. Kurosawa was a humanist and sentimentalist, and he simply couldn't accept or fully comprehend that kind of nihilism. So, he dramatized it into an existential tragedy and wrapped up the ending in a fragile but hopeful message.
The commoner in the film acts like the man in the short story who finds dark liberation through nihilism. He steals the baby's clothes. But whereas Akutagawa portrayed his character with cold detachment, Kurosawa's humanist eyes judges the commoner as vile and gross.

On a conceptual level, Kurosawa's film is much less than Akutagawa's short stories. And yet, I would still defend the film because there just wasn't enough material in the original stories to make for a feature film. If 'In a Grove' had been filmed faithfully, it would run at most 15 min. And 'Rashomon' could be told in 5 min. Also, the storytelling is so cold and dry that it doesn't allow much for dramatics. So, Kurosawa felt a need to fill it in with flesh-and-blood material, and his film works on its own terms. It's like the original script of PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID by Rudy Wurlitzer was an interesting idea on paper but didn't have enough meat-and-bones for a movie. So, Sam Peckinpah had to fill it in with more human-relationship material. TWO LANE BLACKTOP is closer to Wurlitzer's script and is interesting as a cinematic experiment, but sensibility taking the front seat means the characters recede into the rearview mirror.

RASHOMON is now more respected for its historical impact -- introducing Japanese cinema to the world -- than for its merits, which, though considerable, now seem dwarfed by Kurosawa's much greater achievements with IKIRU, SEVEN SAMURAI, THRONE OF BLOOD, YOJIMBO, and HIGH AND LOW. Also, some of the flaws are blaring. The music sounds like a ridiculous parody of Bolero, which seems utterly out of place in medieval Japan. Also, as inspired as Toshiro Mifune's performance is, it's a bit over the top. Mifune would become a much better actor later on.