of thematic bridges are found in all of Kurosawa's films. Regardless of the plot structure of the film, there are common elements found in each one. A director’s attitude regarding his films is very important when examining it as a viewer. Primarily Kurosawa's attitude regarding his films was how he could make the audience intereract with the characters in his stories. Arguably this is the attempt at most films; there is a different feeling regarding this concept in each directors works. There exists an informal consistency in Rashomon and Dodes ‘Ka-Den that is not found between Zemeckis’ films Back to the Future and Forrest Gump. Rashomon and Dodes ‘Ka-Den share many of the same social themes. This would seem unlikely to find because the films are set over 300 years apart. Much of the connections in Kurosawa's films are linked to the Japanese concept of bushido. Viewing Kurosawa’s films as a western viewer, this principle has much different implication that it might for a Japanese viewer. The concept of bushido is a Japanese cultural element, which although one can study its difficult to understand until fully immersed in the culture. Bushido is loosely defined as the unwritten code of moral principles regulating the actions of the Japanese knighthood, or Samurai; the chivalry of Japan. The use of this element is somehow present in all Kurosawa's films. It is not always at the surface, and often it is suppressed. This idea of bushido is a large part of the shared social themes in the films. Rashomon is a period piece set in the tumultuous time of the Japanese civil wars, just before the Tokugawa shogun period. Although the credit of authorship of this film goes to Kurosawa, the writer, Ryunosuke Akutagawa had a strong hand in the social construction of the story. Donald Ritchie states in his book The Films of Akira Kurosawa; “He [Akutagawa] is ‘Western’ in the same way a...
