Summary
Under the Rashomon, the woodcutter announces while pacing that the samurai was in fact killed by a sword, not a dagger, contradicting both the wife and the dead man's tales. This leads the commoner to believe that the woodcutter must have witnessed the events firsthand. The woodcutter confesses as much, and says he did not want to involve himself in the trial. The commoner goads the woodcutter into telling his side of the tale, over the protestations of the priest, who does not want to hear any more "horror stories."
The woodcutter then revises his tale from the beginning of the film. He starts by saying that he did in fact notice a woman's hat while walking through the woods, but instead of finding the samurai's corpse and immediately running away as he initially claimed, he actually happened upon the samurai, Tajomaru, and the woman together in the grove. He describes seeing the samurai tied up and Tajomaru begging for the wife's forgiveness after having attacked her, mingling threats with pleas for her hand in marriage and vows to renounce his life as a criminal.
The wife does not reply to Tajomaru, and instead runs over to release her husband from his bonds, by which Tajomaru assumes she means that the two men should duel to determine her fate. Although Tajomaru seems prepared to take arms, the samurai defiantly refuses to fight for her. Looking at his wife with contempt, the samurai cruelly suggests that she kill herself rather than bear the dishonor of having been with two men, calling her a "shameless whore."
The woman collapses in tears, and Tajomaru tells the samurai to go easy on her, calling all women "weak by nature." Suddenly, the woman stops crying and begins cackling. Rising to her feet with fury, she castigates her husband for not being a "real man" and killing Tajomaru. She admits that Tajomaru at first offered an appealing alternative to her humdrum life, but turned out to be just as disappointing as her husband.
After insulting both of their manhoods, the wife succeeds in goading both men into reluctantly fighting one another. Far from the fierce, death-defying battle in Tajomaru's tale, the sword fight in this version between the men is clumsy and pathetic, with both men initially falling down and retreating. The samurai pursues a trembling Tajomaru until both men lose their swords. Tajomaru manages to recover his blade and deliver a mortal blow to the samurai. The wife screams and flees into the woods, leaving Tajomaru alone in the grove. Tajomaru hobbles away with several items looted from the samurai.
Under the Rashomon, the commoner laughs, mocking the woodcutter's faith that his version is the "real" one. The woodcutter angrily defends his credibility in the matter, and the priest laments that without trust, the earth is "hell." The commoner insists that one cannot understand the evil that men do. Suddenly, the three men hear a crying baby from another section of the building. They find a baby in a makeshift cradle and a kimono with an amulet on it, which the commoner attempts to steal. The woodcutter scolds the commoner for his evil act, and the commoner shifts blame to the baby's parents for abandoning it.
When the woodcutter moves in to throttle the commoner for behaving so despicably, the commoner tells him, "You may have fooled the court, but not me," implying that the woodcutter has not told the whole truth. He accusingly asks the woodcutter what he did with the "dagger with the pearl inlay" that Tajomaru admitted to leaving behind. When the woodcutter falls silent, the commoner insults and slaps him before staggering back out into the rain.
Later, the rain finally stops. The priest holds the crying baby and when the woodcutter tries to hold him, the priest rebukes him for being a thief. The woodcutter sadly explains himself by saying that he has children of his own, that he understands why people are suspicious of others, and that he doesn’t “understand his own soul.” The pitying priest remarks that the woodcutter’s humility and charity have helped restore his faith in the human soul. The woodcutter carries the baby out of the city-gate, as the priest looks on.
Analysis
By this point in the plot, the woodcutter and the priest have told the commoner all three stories—Tajomaru's, the wife's, and the samurai's—effectively bringing the commoner up to speed with what the others currently know. What precipitates the final act of the film is the revelation that the woodcutter, in fact, lied when he originally gave his testimony in court, and when he repeated his story to the commoner (and to the audience). Unlike the mostly unverifiable discrepancies between the testimonies of Tajomaru, the wife, and the samurai, the woodcutter's confession is the first time that one of stories related in the film's prior scenes can be deemed false with certainty. It is also the first time that the audience must confront the fact that some of the frame narrators (the woodcutter, the priest, the commoner) are in fact as unreliable as the witnesses (Tajomaru, the wife, the samurai).
The woodcutter inadvertently confesses this to the others while puzzling over a discrepancy of his own—claiming that the samurai was killed by a sword, not a dagger. Only at the behest of the commoner does the woodcutter tell his tale. Like the stories of the wife and the samurai, the woodcutter's account begins after the rape has already taken place. Rather than fit the stereotype of the swashbuckling hero, Tajomaru in the woodcutter's tale acts like an insecure, impulsive young boy, desperate for the attention of the samurai's wife. Also like the wife's story, the woodcutter describes how the samurai excoriates her after the rape—only in the woodcutter's version, the samurai is even more vicious and obscene, calling her a "whore."
Laughter is a motif in the film that often signals evil, antipathy, and revenge. Tajomaru laughs when he insults the policeman, and when remembering the murder of the samurai. The voice of the samurai cackles through the body of the medium when recalling how Tajomaru rebuked the samurai's wife for suggesting the samurai's murder. In the woodcutter's tale, it is the wife who cackles in defiance, just after Tajomaru arrogantly holds that, "All women are weak by nature." After several accounts of the story where the wife is subjected variously to the violence and contempt of Tajomaru and the samurai, in the woodcutter's tale she rises up and claims her revenge, manipulating them into a fight by laughing at them and impugning their manhood.
According to the woodcutter's tale, Tajomaru and the samurai fight like frightened cowards, both losing their swords before Tajomaru luckily recovers his. The tale effectively punctures the fantasies of manhood and masculinity that drove Tajomaru and the samurai's tales, and restores emotional ferocity to the testimony of the wife, whose court appearance was described by the priest as "so docile... she was almost pitiful." Although the woodcutter believes this account to be the "authentic" version of events, to the commoner it is merely another entertaining variation that may or may not be truthful.
The film concludes with a baby being deposited on the steps of the Rashomon--a plot device that essentially lays bare the ethical philosophies that the men have exemplified and developed over the course of the film. The amoral commoner loots the baby of its possessions, provoking the ire of the woodcutter and the priest. The commoner then exposes the woodcutter for hypocrisy, exposing his theft of the samurai's wife's dagger—another verified lie in the woodcutter's testimony. In spite of the woodcutter's transgressions and lies, and the horrors of the world, the priest is able to accept his heartfelt confession and allow him to hold the baby, because his faith in the human soul still remains intact.
