The Rashomon Syndrome

S.S.Lau
June 21,1998.

"Rashomon" is a movie directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1950. It tells a story of a rape of a young woman and the subsequent murder of the woman and her husband. Rashomon lets you see three perspectives-the woman,the husband and
the criminal. This movie won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film; and it was later made into a western movie starring Paul Newman as the criminal in the 70s.

The moral of the story is that there are many sides to the same story ( or a fact or an observation). Reality is only the way we perceive it. The case in point is the discussion of mixing of seats in Pui-Ching exams among the Lighters.

Josh Hung, Tony ( son of chieftain) Kwok and Ivan (Veg Worm) Choi argued that there was mixing in exams.Tony and Ivan cited the episode of a Fight Share ( class of 57) student banged his head against the desk due to an epileptic attack. Josh claimed to have Wong Cha- Hi ( also class of 57) as a neighbor at an exam.

Bobby Chen, Peter Tong, Chiu Chung-woo and SS Lau claimed they did not remember such a practice at Pui-Ching. We, therefore, have a case of Rashomon here.

After reflecting on the received e-mails, I believe the mixing probably did happen once in or before 1957. All those remembered cited the case of having the class of 57 students around. They must have been seated near the student who had epilepsy (Josh was just impressed with Wong Cha-Hi, brother of Wong Cha-Woo, I believe, in those days).

Those who do not remember must have been seated far away. Nothing unusaul
happened, and therefore it was just one of the hundreds of exams that we took at Pui-Ching. After this mixing, Pui-Ching must have thought a pain in the neck to do it again and stopped the practice all together.

I do remember helping my neighbor cheat in a History exam in a year after 1957. This would not and could not have happened if we had mixed seating. As it turned out, the person who cheated had higher score in the exam than the person who provided the right answer to his neighbor. It goes to show that exam scores, especially those that require only descriptive and qualitative answers, depend on the "expectation" value of the student. If the student is "expected" to do well, higher grades will be given in general rule. I was not expected to do well in any exams, and was not given a high grade inspite of the right answer. It took me a while to realize the importance and significance of "image building" in life. Do we have a case of Rashomon in this story?