Physical Media Releases (Rashomon) Rashomon

Rashomon's home video history traces the arc from a Japanese art-house curiosity to a globally canonized classic. The film that Daiei's president called "incomprehensible" has been restored, remastered, and reissued across formats for seven decades.

Early Japanese releases preceded Western availability by years

Kadokawa Pictures (which absorbed Daiei's catalog) released Rashomon on DVD in Japan in May 2008, followed by a Blu-ray in February 2009. These releases drew from a restoration completed in 2008 — the first comprehensive effort to address decades of damage to the original film elements. (wikipedia)

The 2008 restoration was a multi-institutional effort

The Academy Film Archive, the National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and Kadokawa Pictures collaborated on the 2008 restoration. The original camera negative was in poor condition, so the team worked from a print struck from the negative in the 1960s — the best surviving photochemical generation. The print was scanned at 4K resolution at Lowry Digital in Burbank, California, then converted to 2K files for image processing and cleanup. Damage was repaired using a combination of automated software and frame-by-frame manual work, with customized visual effects addressing warping and frame blurring. (highdefdigest)

Criterion released the definitive Western editions

The Criterion Collection released Rashomon as spine #138 — first on DVD in 2002, then in an upgraded DVD and Blu-ray edition on November 6, 2012, based on the 2008 restoration.

The Blu-ray technical specifications:

Spec	Detail
Format	BD-50
Video	1080p / AVC MPEG-4
Aspect ratio	1.37:1 (original)
Audio	Japanese LPCM 1.0 (mono); English dub mono
Subtitles	English
Runtime	88 minutes

High Def Digest praised the transfer:

"A great variety of grays are on display. Blacks are deep and rich." — High Def Digest, High Def Digest (2012)

The reviewer noted some blooming in bright exterior scenes and occasional softness likely inherited from the source material, but called the overall restoration "marvelous." The mono soundtrack was described as "clean and clear," with Hayasaka's score and the prominent rain effects well-balanced against dialogue. (highdefdigest)

The special features assembled decades of scholarship

The Criterion edition includes:

• Audio commentary by Donald Richie — the preeminent English-language scholar of Japanese cinema, author of The Films of Akira Kurosawa, providing scene-by-scene analysis across the full 88-minute runtime.
• Robert Altman on Rashomon (7 minutes) — the director of Nashville and The Player discusses the film's influence on his own approach to multiple perspectives and overlapping narratives.
• The World of Kazuo Miyagawa (13 minutes) — an excerpt from a documentary on the cinematographer, covering his technical innovations and working relationship with Kurosawa.
• A Testimony as an Image (69 minutes) — a substantial documentary featuring interviews with surviving cast and crew members, providing production recollections decades after the original shoot.
• Interview with Takashi Shimura (16 minutes) — the actor who played the woodcutter discusses his long collaboration with Kurosawa.
• Original Japanese trailer (3 minutes).
• 44-page booklet with essays by Stephen Prince and Akira Kurosawa, the original Akutagawa source stories ("In a Grove" and "Rashomon"), and production stills.

(highdefdigest)

The BFI released a UK edition

The British Film Institute released its own Blu-ray edition of Rashomon in the United Kingdom in 2019, providing UK availability independent of the Criterion release. (wikipedia)