Differences And Similarities Between The Twilight Zone And Rashomon

After World War 2, the international television and film industries both changed drastically. In the United States, a Supreme Court decision eliminated the vertical integration of the major film studios, and at the exact same time, the postwar Baby Boom and rise of suburbia drove television to high prominence. Meanwhile, in countries such as Japan, the end of the war led to a blossoming in the diversity of their films; no longer did they solely have to create films about imperialist Japan. There, artistic cinema flourished. However, both in the United States and various other foreign countries, several narrative themes continued to reflect on tradition, conflict, and morality. Two pieces of media primarily used the psychology of their characters

On one hand, The Twilight Zone ends in a chilling allegory; after Maple Street descends into vandalism, chaos, and panic, the final scenes show the actual aliens merely turning the neighborhood’s power on and off, saying, “Humans pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves. All we need to do is sit back and watch.” Then, in the epilogue of the episode, Serling himself takes the point further, as he says:

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own: for the children, and the children yet unborn” (Serling, The Twilight

At the time, the film industry of Japan was blossoming; restrictions were being lifted, and the country had grown into its era of Classical Japanese cinema. It was the only country between 1930 and 1970 that had a large enough audience to show more domestically-made films than foreign films, and the most common themes they portrayed were rooted in Japanese history. It is possible that the inkling of hope present only in Rashomon is a result of the return of Japanese tradition in films towards the end of the US occupation; during the occupation, jidaigeki films like Rashomon – period dramas that often depict human conflict and samurai battles – were banned. However, as the US occupation lifted, these films, along with a return to Japanese tradition rooted in naturalism, theater, and melodrama, quickly gained prominence once more. Rashomon is no exception to this phenomenon; its story is rooted in the human psyche, and while it delves into conflict and fear that was typical of wartime and postwar Japan, its nearly-hopeful ending suggests that this return to artistic, expressionist cinema was a sign to Kurosawa that Japan was finally starting to