Fridge / Rashomon

• Fridge Brilliance: Tajōmaru’s demeanor in court and during his flashback is very jarring―it’s not even scary, just unnatural, with his unnatural bursts of laughter and awkward body language. That’s probably because he’s lying, and he’s just pretending to be a big-shot bandit.
  • We are meant to think the woodcutter is lying about his story because he stole the dagger. But if what he says about having six other children to feed aside from the abandoned infant is true, he could easily be interpreted as stealing the costly dagger to make ends meet. And all the other aspects of the story could very well be true.
    • Alternatively, he might just as well lie about his six children. Which makes us wonder why he really took that baby...
  • Why was the supposed actual fight between Tajōmaru and the man so pathetic? If you look at each of the stories, both men paint each other in a positive light. Tajōmaru interprets the man as willing to fight for the hand of his woman, while the man forgives Tajōmaru for all he'd done and interprets him nobly and refusing to kill the man.
    • Or each man is lying further for his own ego. Tajōmaru would much rather boast he won in an epic duel with a noble master of the sword than say he got lucky in a drawn-out Wimp Fight. The husband can make his wife look worse if he makes even Tajōmaru the bandit as disgusted with her. The woodcutter's account of the fight shows two cowards—one a gentleman who may never have killed before, the other a bandit who probably uses shouts and sneak attacks to surprise his victims.
  • If the wife claims she was raped, why did she have to go through all the trouble to protect Tajōmaru in court, and confess to the murder of her own husband? It could be possible that the sex was consensual, and she was ashamed to confess her own infidelity.
    • In her own way, the wife is painting herself every bit as self-servingly as the Bandit and her husband. Murdering her husband may be her own way of showing her scorn and contempt for him, though.
    • My general impression of the wife is that her secret nurtured dream was to become the main heroine of some breathtaking story. So she was not to deny herself this little joy, even if it meant effectively casting herself as the main villainess. It would also explain why she decided to give the testimony in the first place.
• Tajōmaru's version is actually quite close to the Woodcutter's, though made to depict him in a better light. Either he (almost) told the truth, or the Woodcutter's version is a complete lie based on Tajōmaru's tale.
• Did the husband and wife have an unhappy marriage due to him being a wimp and she more assertive, but with traditional, honor-based Japanese society, it'd reflect poorly on both of them?
  • Was the wife a villain in the husband's account since he wanted to find some way to shame her from beyond the grave because of her domineering personality? Could she have potentially had sex with the bandit to spite her husband, then lied about it so she wouldn't be rejected by society? Or was her fragile nature in court because of the trauma she'd just suffered made worse by her husband's rejection.
  • Then there's the matter of whether there was a fight and who was responsible for the death. Did she actually goad the two into fighting or for the bandit to kill her husband? What if Tajōmaru truly ran away after considering it or during the fight, thus claimed it was an epic clash to save face, or maybe the husband state he committed seppuku because he lost or possibly stabbed by his wife? Perhaps upon being overwhelmed with emotions, the wife passed out after killing him in a blind fit of rage after some form of ridicule he made? Did the woodcutter take the dagger from his chest when she was unconscious, then only insist the Tajōmari killed the husband because he wanted to draw attention away from it?