I have always been interested in Japanese culture, art and cinema. This interest probably started because I grew up watching Japanese cartoons and animations as a child. But when I went to Japan for the first time in 2013, my interest in Japanese cinema and art grew even more. Last summer I traveled around Japan for three months to try to understand more about Japanese culture and gather some of my first-hand experiences. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Also, for the last two years during my study program I have been studying Polly Lang in Japanese. I have to say that it is a really challenging decision for me to study Japanese, especially learning to read, for which I have to learn three different alphabets. But learning Japanese helps me understand Japanese art culture and cinema in a much better way. The movie camera was embraced by Japanese filmmakers in the late 19th century, a couple of years after it began to develop in very different ways than Western filmmakers. The length of their films, for example, is much longer than in other countries. Japanese cinema is very fascinating to me, especially for its style and storytelling. I am particularly interested in the styles and storytelling of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. All the films that Kurosawa made are masterpieces for me. His films have still had a wide influence on contemporary cinematography around the world. I believe that his method of storytelling in his films not only allows viewers to gain a different perspective and understanding, but also represents a revolution in contemporary cinematic storytelling. Arguably, Rashomon for me was the most influential of all Kurosawa's films because it asks a question that is at the heart of all cinema: what is reality? Nowadays, all over the world, every cinema has used similar permutations of Rashomon's style a million times, probably without even realizing it. According to Hutchinson, Akiro Kurosawa was one of the most "Western" Japanese directors. After its release, Rashamon gained global acceptance. The film begins with rain falling on the eponymous ancient ruins of a large structure that was once the city gate, but now sits in a terrible, abandoned neighborhood. This gate represents the main setting of the plot, in which a farmer, a woodcutter and a priest talk about the strange murder of the samurai while waiting for the rain to stop. In the film, we observe four different aspects of what happened - a rape followed by a murder - first by a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) who witnessed the crimes, a bandit (Toshiro Mifune) who is the one who committed the rape of a samurai's wife, then the samurai's wife (Machiko Kyo) who was raped and the ghost or spirit of the samurai (Masayuki Mori), who speaks through psychics after his murder. Everyone is presented with four different realities, each of which tells the public different and totally contradictory stories. Rashomon is one of the first examples of minimalism in cinema. Kazuo Miyagawa's elegant cinematography and the simple plot, masterfully directed by Kurosawa, present the viewer with two different stories: what we are seeing seems real, but neither of these can represent the truth. Although there are flaws in the portrayal of the wife in Rashomon, the film has managed to stand the test of time and be considered a classic thanks to the innovative techniques employed by Kurosawa that raise questions about objective truth.