Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
After the surprise success of Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" (1950) at the 1951 Venice Film Festival (taking home the Golden Lion), RKO Radio Pictures licensed the film for an English-subtitled American release—something then quite unheard of for a Japanese film—consequently thrusting the recovering Japanese film industry into the international spotlight and proving that Japanese films would be welcome on American screens.
In 1963, "Rashomon" was one of 30 non-American films readied for television by Seven Arts Associated (Volume 6, "The International Volume," of its "Films of the 50's" package), under which auspices the English-dubbed version of the film was produced. Both 16mm dubbed prints of "Rashomon" that I've seen at auction reuse some or all of the RKO release's English visuals, evidently leaving the dubbing artists at Titra Sound Studios uncredited.
It should also go without saying that the Janus Films logos here weren't seen on prints from either the 1951 RKO or 1963-on Seven Arts runs; but they're spliced into the source print here with the original audio underneath, so I decided it was best to leave them.
"Here," incidentally, is Embassy Home Entertainment VHS # 6110 (1986). Embassy # 6110 is the dubbed version, while concurrently-released # 6109 is subtitled. (Despite nearly identical sleeves, the dubbed and subtitled versions are differentiated, so caveat emptor.) The dubbed audio subsequently has been ported over to DVD and Blu-ray releases of "Rashomon" in the Criterion Collection, but I don't believe these credits have been on any video release since these Embassy cassettes went out of print.
黒澤明監督の『羅生門』アメリカ版
After the surprise success of Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" (1950) at the 1951 Venice Film Festival (taking home the Golden Lion), RKO Radio Pictures licensed the film for an English-subtitled American release—something then quite unheard of for a Japanese film—consequently thrusting the recovering Japanese film industry into the international spotlight and proving that Japanese films would be welcome on American screens.
In 1963, "Rashomon" was one of 30 non-American films readied for television by Seven Arts Associated (Volume 6, "The International Volume," of its "Films of the 50's" package), under which auspices the English-dubbed version of the film was produced. Both 16mm dubbed prints of "Rashomon" that I've seen at auction reuse some or all of the RKO release's English visuals, evidently leaving the dubbing artists at Titra Sound Studios uncredited.
It should also go without saying that the Janus Films logos here weren't seen on prints from either the 1951 RKO or 1963-on Seven Arts runs; but they're spliced into the source print here with the original audio underneath, so I decided it was best to leave them.
"Here," incidentally, is Embassy Home Entertainment VHS # 6110 (1986). Embassy # 6110 is the dubbed version, while concurrently-released # 6109 is subtitled. (Despite nearly identical sleeves, the dubbed and subtitled versions are differentiated, so caveat emptor.) The dubbed audio subsequently has been ported over to DVD and Blu-ray releases of "Rashomon" in the Criterion Collection, but I don't believe these credits have been on any video release since these Embassy cassettes went out of print.
黒澤明監督の『羅生門』アメリカ版
