I'd heard about the film after it had won some sort of award in Venice. Watching it, I wonder if a Watcher hadn't been telling things he shouldn't have...
There had been four men waiting out that storm beneath that massive ruin of a gate, not three. Just as there had been five witnesses to the crime, if you don't count the monk who'd seen nothing of the incident itself and had only met the couple in question on the road.
Back then, I was quite the rare sight in Japan, but as it was several centuries before they would close their borders to outsiders, I had been relatively unmolested during my travels through the region. I had received a number of odd looks, but having been the only white kid in a family of relatively darkly complected Egyptians who'd lived in a community of the same, that was nothing new to me.
I'd cut through the forest just for the hell of it when I came upon the scene of what was to prove to be rape with a side of murder. The rape part was over and done with, otherwise I would have been obliged to help out. By the time I'd arived, the bandit had been rather mockingly "comforting" the young woman he'd just raped.
As I was trying to figure out whether it would be best to leave or stay and do something, the bandit had freed the husband and begun mocking the man while the wife screamed at him for having done nothing, not even so much as begging the bandit to stop, as she was being raped.
There was a brief scuffle between the husband and the bandit in which the bandit had picked up a dagger and stabbed the husband in the heart with it. After it was over, the bandit ran one way, and the woman the other, and the guy who'd been hanging around in the trees near the other end of the clearing came out of hiding and swiped the dagger that had been buried in the husband's chest.
As I'd listened to the monk and the woodcutter who'd swiped the rather expensive looking dagger from the crime scene relay the tale as they'd seen and heard it to the traveler who'd taken shelter from the rain, I'd been quietly smug over the fact that I alone had known the true version of events. Now however, now I'm not so sure. Not only could there have been something I'd missed back then, but I could also be misremembering things now. Being as old as I am, I've seen a hundred events of it's like, and I could very well be mixing up the details of two or more similar ones.
Author's Note: If you want to know what the narrator's talking about, I recommend that you watch the film Rashomon. It's a bit tricky to find, but as it's in the Criterion Collection, you'll be able to find it here in the states. It's an interesting story and a classic, and I'd recommend watching it at least once in your life.