تأثير راشمون

Rashomon is the name of a gate in a Japanese forest where the events of the story took place, which was turned into a film in the 1950s. In short, the events of the Rashomon novel unfold as follows: three men - a woodcutter, a priest, and a commoner - take shelter from the rain at the abandoned Rashomon gates, discussing a recent investigation into a samurai's murder. Two of them were witnesses - the priest saw the samurai and his wife before the crime, and the woodcutter discovered the crime scene, but their testimonies were brief. The main testimonies come from a thief, the samurai's wife, and the dead samurai himself, who communicates with them through a spiritual medium. Everyone agrees that the thief deceived the samurai and his wife into accompanying him to a secluded orchard, where he fainted and then bound them, but the accounts differ and the testimonies are conflicting regarding what followed this event.

The "Rashomon Effect" describes the tendency of witnesses or participants in the same events to provide mutually contradictory accounts of what happened due to the subjectivity of human memory and its fallibility, and not because of lying.

In its simplest form, the story addresses what is subjective and objective in a captivating artistic style that made the film, the novel, and its Japanese director Akira Kurosawa a significant artistic landmark in the twentieth century. Of course, the term has transitioned into psychology and social sciences, and the Rashomon effect is often depicted in the business world as an image of an elephant being approached by a group of people, one holding its trunk, others its tail and legs, and so on, each dealing with the specific part of the elephant they reached without considering it as a complete, self-standing entity. This narrative style emphasizes the idea that truth is not absolute but is shaped by personal biases, emotions, and experiences.

This storytelling technique was pioneering at the time, as it challenged the traditional concept of objective reality. It offered a new way to explore the psychology of characters and the complexities of human nature, where truth is not a single fixed entity but a collection of subjective experiences.

The Rashomon effect also gains significance in journalism and media, where different media outlets may present the same story in vastly different ways, depending on their perspectives or agendas. This has become particularly important in the age of social media, where information spreads rapidly and is often distorted, leading to a fragmented understanding of reality.

This effect reminded me of the longest verse in the Holy Quran, the verse of debt, which talks about writing down the debt whether the amount is small or large. The Rashomon effect in witness testimony is reflected in the Almighty's saying (that one may err and remind the other).

To err, not to lie.

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