Took me 10 minutes to realize this movie is good..

They had 60+ years to see it. No harm done spoiling it.
Remember... it was his sled. :)

You are propably wondering whether this is my singature or not.

Thanks for something useful in this thread.
If memory serves right, this is the movie Bergman considered his number one in cinema. And for many, Kurosawa is the best director ever. Well.
While this movie deserves a 10/10, it is far off being the best, or Kurosawa being best. I do understand Bergman, who might have loved to be able to direct such a bleak, black-white story at actually 3 scenes only, and so little plot.

Really great: the first 10 minutes of rain, in that broken down temple. And the wood cutter rushing through the woods. World class cinematography. Absolute adequate (Japanese!) acting. Very suitable sounds and audio.
I think, I'll never be able to warm up to the always over-the-top melodramatic style of Asian cinema, though. And this also brought me to my '10/10 but' further up:

1. It is too close to theatre, the style of the 1920's and partly 1930's with its three basic locations, and very basic locations that is, think of the court. By 1950, cinema was further away from the theatre elsewhere in the world.

2. Stiff acting, be it 1950 or 2015, by East-Asian actors. Toshiro Mifune excluded.

3. With some exceptions, too static. Anywhere else in Europe, one had learned to actually render the 'running pictures' into actually running, instead of static scenes at static locations: blow life into those.

And before I forget it: I agree with you on the wife-thing. She clearly was the sort of taking a chance whenever it would pop up, not truthfully and yet supported by her own story.
She was a nobody through being raped. In those days, women couldn't just live and travel on their own, and now she had little more chance than make it as a prostitute.
I can't even exclude that she meant it, when she gave herself to the stronger party. This is corroborated by more than one the otherwise contradictory stories.
The latter could even be extended into the chance that she got hot for the stronger man of the two.

Clearly, none of the stories are supposed to be true. Everyone makes up what serves their purpose: the dagger with the pearl for the wood-cutter, the eyes of the husband that lead to something grotesque in her story, obviously the great fight of 23 touches for the bandit, plus his manly-hood, and the honour that the husband demonstrated and told through the medium. Just to name some basic ones.

And to add: it is a bit like Dante, since it ends with a baby, lying there as a product of a lie, with the people around trying to steal and lie from and for the baby. Instead of learning from their lies, everyone just continues lying, in this case lying around and about a baby growing up in a system of lies, before it can speak.