@Jeruba I recommend starting now on some of the great Japanese animated movies. To truly understand the Japanese experience post world war 2 you should see Grave of the Fireflies.
Here is my slightly edited Letterboxd review of Rashomon. I gave it 3.5 stars.
This is an extraordinarily difficult film to give a “star” rating. It clearly is a masterpiece and is a gripping story, which I will mention below. However, I won’t be seeing it again.
Rashomon is about a rape and a murder, and 4 different eyewitness accounts, all who tell the story but tell it very differently. Who is right? From a forensic point of view, it matters, but from the film, it does not. All result in the rape of a woman and the death of a man.
The brilliance of this movie is that it almost entirely takes place in flashbacks. The story is told in a torrential rainstorm and is recounted 4 different times. By the 4th time you see it, it’s familiar, but still different.
Even though this movie was early in Kurosawa’s career, and all of his great movies are to come, I don’t recommend this if you’re a beginner in Kurosawa, as it’s likely to put you off. Start with Yojimbo, Seven Samurai, or even maybe Ran. However, if you are a Kurosawa fan, this movie is a must see, as it is his first international commercial success and is almost Shakespearian in its tragedy and, yes, hope.