Beyond Reading: Exploring the Rashomon Effect Through Performance and Film
By: Gordon Rees
For the last several years, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s Hell Screen has been a regular part of my Introduction to Modern Japanese Literature course at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies (NUFS). Over time, I had built up teaching materials, class activities, and resources. I knew the story well, knew how students were likely to respond, and my preparation was largely done. With a few adjustments each year, the lesson almost taught itself.
Akutagawa (1892–1927), often called the “father of the Japanese short story,” was a major figure in modern Japanese literature fascinated by human psychology and the complexities of human nature. I kept returning to Hell Screen because it offers opportunities to explore the Japanese Buddhist conception of hell and the lengths an artist might go for the sake of art. The story culminates in an artist watching his own daughter burn alive so that he can paint a realistic depiction of hell. By the end of the unit, I, and I suspect many of my students, often felt emotionally exhausted.
I wanted to change the emotional balance of the course. Several works I teach deal with dark themes, and I wanted to move away from the intensity of Hell Screen. I decided to revisit In a Grove; another Akutagawa story I had tried teaching once before but struggled to teach effectively. Hardly light reading, it nevertheless offered a different challenge centered on perspective, interpretation, and the uncertainty of truth. Giving up the security of a lesson I had spent years developing meant starting over.
At the heart of In a Grove is what became known as the Rashomon effect, the idea that people can experience and describe the same event in conflicting ways. I still had much to learn about the concept, and I wasn’t sure the activities I was designing would work. I was asking my students to step outside their comfort zone, but first I had to step outside mine. That decision changed much more than the course reading list. It changed the way I think about teaching literature.
Why Reading Wasn't Enough
In a Grove is built around a single crime described by multiple witnesses. A bandit, a wife, a woodcutter, and even the dead samurai, speaking through a spirit medium, provide conflicting accounts of what happened. Akira Kurosawa later adapted the story into his internationally acclaimed film Rashomon (1950), whose contradictory testimonies helped give rise to the term Rashomon effect. Rather than providing clear answers, the story asks readers to grapple with conflicting perspectives, unreliable narration, and the elusive nature of truth.
I understood these literary ideas, but I wasn’t sure how to teach them. Students could read about unreliable narration and conflicting perspectives, but would reading and discussing the story allow them to experience the uncertainty at its heart? I worried these ideas would remain abstract.
I found myself returning to Louise Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory, which views literature as an experience created through the transaction between reader and text. Rather than extracting information from a literary work, readers bring their experiences, feelings, and ideas to the text, actively creating meaning. Perhaps my students needed to do more than read In a Grove. Perhaps they needed to live through it.
Over the past decade, much of my teaching and research has centered on Performance-Assisted Learning (PAL), which uses performance, not to train students as actors, but to deepen learning. PAL differs from performance-based learning: performance is not necessarily the end goal, but a means of supporting learning. Activities can range from a dramatic reading or role-play to a radio drama or film, depending on the teaching goal. I had used PAL to develop presentation skills in language courses and deepen understanding of texts in literature courses. This time, however, I wanted to see whether performance could help students grasp abstract literary concepts such as perspective, unreliable narration, and the uncertainty of truth.
What if my students didn’t just analyze the witnesses?
What if they didn’t just learn about the Rashomon effect, but lived through it?
Page → Performance → Film
If students were going to experience the Rashomon effect rather than merely learn about it, one activity wasn’t enough. I needed a sequence that gradually moved them beyond reading, toward performance, and ultimately toward creating their own interpretations.
We began by reading In a Grove aloud in small groups using an approach loosely based on Chamber Theatre, with each student reading the part of a character or narrator. By listening to the other characters’ testimonies as well as performing their own, students immediately encountered the story as a collection of competing voices. Afterwards, they worked in literature circles to answer comprehension questions, compare testimonies, discuss motivation, and debate what had actually happened.
Next, in the performance stage, students prepared and recorded individual character testimonies, but the goal was not simply accurate reading. They had to persuade the audience that their version was the truth. Before recording, they considered three questions :
What is my character hiding?
What emotions should I reveal?
Would an audience trust me?
Students next watched Kurosawa’s Rashomon, comparing it with Akutagawa’s story and discussing why the testimonies differed. They explored how the Rashomon effect can extend beyond literature into eyewitness testimony, journalism, photography, and social media.
I felt students now understood the Rashomon effect intellectually. In the film stage, the challenge was to apply it creatively through modern Rashomon-inspired short films in small groups. Each group would create one shared event told through multiple contradictory testimonies. Students would storyboard and script their ideas, act and film a shared scene, and record individual witness testimonies. Throughout the project, I challenged them to ask not simply, “What happened?” but “How would my character want others to believe it happened?”
Collaborative filmmaking required students to negotiate ideas and construct meaning together while adapting the Rashomon effect to a modern setting. As Linda Hutcheon argues, adaptation involves reinterpretation and re-creation. Rather than reproducing Akutagawa’s story, students had to decide how its central idea could work in their own world.
I wanted the project to become more than a filmmaking assignment. Each activity built upon the last, moving students from page to performance and ultimately to film. I hoped that in moving from readers to performers to filmmakers, they would also become literary interpreters.
Students Create Their Own Rashomon Effect
The class consisted of 16 students, including 11 international students and five domestic Japanese students. English was the medium of instruction, and for many students it was an additional language. I divided them into four groups, each with at least one Japanese student. I used ChatGPT to help develop ten contemporary scenarios based on situations students might encounter in university life. The scenarios were ambiguous, allowing students to explore how perspective, memory, emotion, and self-interest could produce different versions of the same event. By moving the Rashomon effect from a medieval grove to their own lives, I hoped they would see it not simply as a literary concept, but as something that could occur around them.
We held a scenario “draft day,” with groups taking turns choosing from the list of scenarios. The four selected scenarios involved missing scholarship money, a viral video capturing only part of a conflict, a missing phone, and an accusation of cheating on a test.
Each group then created a three- to -five-minute film. Students storyboarded and scripted a shared scene before acting in and filming it. They then wrote and performed individual witness testimonies, using voice, emotion, and characterization to persuade viewers that their version was true. Finally, they created an introduction explaining the Rashomon effect and a conclusion asking viewers to consider the conflicting testimonies and the difficulty of determining the truth. The films followed the same structure: one event, multiple perspectives, and no simple answer.
Did It Work?
So, did it work? The short answer is yes, although the project also revealed some challenges. At the end of the course, I asked students to complete a short survey about whether the activities had helped them engage with and understand the literature. Fifteen of the 16 students responded. Nine completed the English-language survey and six completed the Japanese-language version. Because the surveys were anonymous and one international student chose the Japanese version, responses are reported here by survey language rather than student nationality.
When asked whether creating the film helped them understand the Rashomon effect more deeply than simply reading In a Grove and watching Rashomon, all six respondents who completed the Japanese-language survey agreed or strongly agreed. In contrast, eight of the nine respondents who completed the English-language survey were neutral, while one agreed. Most English-language respondents, however, felt the project connected the literature to contemporary society, with six agreeing, two neutral, and one disagreeing. The biggest practical challenge was collaboration: 12 of the 15 respondents agreed or strongly agreed that finding time to work outside class was difficult.
One way of thinking about the learning involved in this project comes from research on embodied learning. From a neuroscientific perspective, learning is not confined to abstract thought; bodily action engages sensorimotor and memory systems. A meta-analysis of 46 studies found a moderately positive effect of embodied learning on learning performance, with stronger effects for active embodiment, small-group learning, and the humanities. This seems relevant to PAL, where students use voice, movement, emotion, and interaction to explore ideas. However, the additional demands of the filmmaking project (scripting, scheduling, filming, and editing) may also have affected how students felt about the project as a learning experience.
What Would I Do Differently?
First, I would make the role of performance clear from the start. I developed the filmmaking project after the syllabus was published, so students did not know that scriptwriting, acting, and filmmaking would be part of the course. One or two questioned whether drama belonged in a literature class. Next year, I will describe the project in the syllabus so students understand that performance and creative adaptation are part of how we will explore literature.
I also need to provide more class time for filming. The international and Japanese students had different academic schedules, making it difficult to meet outside class. Some students wanted clearer guidelines and assessment rubrics, while others wanted more creative freedom, making it important to balance structure and creativity. Keeping the technical side simple should help students focus on performance and literary interpretation. The goal isn’t better filmmaking. It’s deeper engagement with literature.
Finally, the project should not end when the camera stops. I had planned a joint viewing and discussion, but the project took longer than anticipated, and we still had another literary work and the final writing assignment to complete. Instead, I uploaded the films to Padlet, and some students had not watched them before completing the survey. Next time, I will reserve time to watch and discuss the films together, making reflection the project’s final PAL and literary-analysis stage.
Conclusion
In a Grove is a story about uncertainty. Ironically, teaching it required me to embrace uncertainty. I wasn’t sure whether the activities would work, whether students would accept performing literature, or whether filmmaking would deepen their understanding. But perhaps teachers need that uncertainty. It is easy to return to lessons and routines we know work. Stepping outside that comfort zone can remind us that we are learners too.
That is what I value most about PAL. Performance does not have to mean staging a full-length play or undertaking a major production. It can be a dramatic reading, role-play, short recorded scene, or, as in this project, a three- to -five-minute film. What matters is not the performance itself but how it supports our teaching goals. Along the way, we may see sides of our students’ personalities that do not always emerge in a traditional classroom. Given opportunities to collaborate, create, and perform, their personalities can shine through.
Not everything worked as I had hoped, and next time I will do some things differently. But that is part of teaching. We try, reflect, adjust, and try again. Meaningful learning, for both students and teachers, sometimes begins when we are willing to step beyond the security of familiar routines. For me, that meant moving beyond reading, from page to performance to film.
Gordon Rees is an associate professor at Yokkaichi University and an adjunct lecturer at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies (NUFS). He holds an MA in Asian Studies from Cornell University. His research interests include performance-assisted learning (PAL), Japanese cinema and modern Japanese literature. Other interests include running, yoga, and hiking.