#267: KUROSAWA, Akira: Kagemusha (1980)

KUROSAWA, Akira (Japan)

Kagemusha [1980]

Spine #267
DVD/Blu-ray

When a warlord dies, a peasant thief is called upon to impersonate him, and then finds himself haunted by the warlord's spirit as well as his own ambitions. In his late color masterpiece Kagemusha, Akira Kurosawa returns to the samurai film and to a primary theme of his career — the play between illusion and reality. Sumptuously reconstructing the splendor of feudal Japan and the pageantry of war, Kurosawa creates a historical epic that is also a meditation on the nature of power.

180 minutes
Color

Stereo

in Japanese

1:85:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2009

Director/Writers

Screenplay by Masato Ide and Akira Kurosawa.

Kurosawa was 70 when he directed Kagemusha.

Other Kurosawa films in the Collection:

Eclipse Series 23: Sanshiro Sugata (1943)
Eclipse Series 23: The Most Beautiful (1944)
Eclipse Series 23: Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two (1945)
Eclipse Series 23: The Men Who Tread On The Tiger's Tail (1945)
Eclipse Series 7: No Regrets For Our Youth (1946)

Eclipse Series 7: One Wonderful Sunday (1947)
#413: Drunken Angel (1948)

#233: Stray Dog (1949)
#138: Rashomon (1950)

Eclipse Series 7: Scandal (1950)
Eclipse Series 7: The Idiot (1951)
#221: Ikiru (1952)
#2: Seven Samurai (1954)
Eclipse Series 7: I Live In Fear (1955)

#190: Throne Of Blood (1957)
#239: The Lower Depths (1957)
#116: The Hidden Fortress (1958)

#319: The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
#52: Yojimbo (1961)

#53: Sanjuro (1962)
#24: High And Low (1963)
#159: Red Beard (1965)
#465: Dodes'Ka-Den (1970)
#316: Ran (1985)

#842: Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990)

The Film

Things were so be in the Japanese film industry at this time that Kurosawa’s previous film — Dersu Uzala (1975) — was shot and partially financed in the (former) Soviet Union.

So when Dersu wrapped, Kurosawa had plenty of time on his hands and he set about creating his next film entirely in his mind. He created nearly 250 paintings and sketches of the scenes and characters, and at some point George Lucas got a peek at them. Lucas was stunned to learn of his Kurosawa’s financing problems.

“It was a tragedy. It was like telling Michelangelo, ‘all right, you’re seventy and we’re not letting you paint anymore.’”

Now recall at this time that a certain Lucas film had done pretty well at the box office! Thus, he was able to more or less blackmail 20th Century Fox into coming up with the remaining money and shaming Toho into co-financing the film. (Francis Ford Coppola got in on the act, as well.) And so,

“For the first time in history, an American studio was pressured into buying a film it didn’t especially want, to engineer another company into pouring money into a film it did not want to make.” — Stuart Galbraith IV: The Emperor and the Wolf, pp. 547-48.

Further discussion of Kagemusha can hardly proceed without mentioning Shintarô Katsu, the immortal actor who played the memorable blind swordsman Zatôichi character in 26 feature films and 100 or so television episodes.

Kurosawa thought he’d be perfect for the dual roles of Shingen Takeda and his double.

But on July 18, 1979, Katsu showed up at dress rehearsals with his own camera crew.

“What’s that noise?”

“That’s my video crew,” Katsu replied. “I make it a rule to do this all the time.”

“Well, it may be your rule,” replied the director, “but you’re not permitted to do this. It’s very disturbing.”

Katsu immediately grabbed his armor and walked out of the studio. Kurosawa was very quiet as he watched him go. He called out to Teruyo Nogami (his assistant since 1950) and said, “call up Tatsuya Nakadai to see if he’s free.” He was; Katsu was fired and Nakadai would become Takeda and his kagemusha.

• The shoot took nine months.
• Kurosawa was a stickler for historical accuracy; but one can guess with some certainty that there were probably no female warriors in any of these battles. Yet 10% of the equestrians were women, riding atop 200 specially trained horses (many flown in from America).
• The first long, uncut take is remarkable for many reasons. There are three characters, but only two actors; on the left is Nobukado, Shingen’s brother (Tsutomu Yamazaki), in the center and on the right are Shingen and the double, both played by Nakadai.
• Shingen to his brother: “Even with this resemblance — he is so wicked as to be sentenced to crucifixion — how could this scoundrel be my double?”
• At this, the thief breaks into hysterical laughter.
• “I only stole a few coins. I’m a petty thief.” He bravely turns towards Shingen and continues. “A man who’s killed hundreds and robbed whole domains is hardly the one …”
• Thus, Nakadai is able from the very start to make an obvious differentiation between the warrior and the double.
• Masaru Satô had finally had enough. Kurosawa’s composer since Fumio Hayasaka’s death in 1955, he apparently had one too many meetings with the boss, who no doubt asked him to imitate some “greatest hits” classical composer down to the last 16th-note (see my comments about him in Red Beard [1965] {Spine #159}. His replacement was the talented Shinichirô Ikebe.
• Check out his score for the scene immediately following the title card: We hear wind, a FTB, and come up on a bunch of sleeping soldiers sprawled out on the steps of a castle (super: “1573”). Suddenly, a soldier-messenger (tsukaiban) (Masatsugu Kuriyama) is literally flying down the steps (Ikebe using clarinet arpeggios to support this feeling, and eventually introducing strong backbeats, giving the scene some gravitas.
• There are 12 cuts in 72 seconds (average shot length: six seconds). For such a fast-paced scene, the music has to carry a feeling of swiftness to accompany the image.
• The messenger delivers his message (the water supply to the enemy’s castle has been cut) and is dismissed by Nobukado, playing his role as the double. Katsuyori (Kenichi Hagiwara) — Shingen’s son — says, “we must let father know we’ve cut the aqueduct.” Nobukado stares straight ahead, as Masakage Yamagata (the great Shuji [Hideji] Ôtaki [the old man saved by a vaccum cleaner in Tampopo (1985) {Spine #868}] replies: “your father Lord Shingen is right here.”
• Yamagata seems to the only samurai who can speak frankly to his warlord. In the next scene, he chews out Shingen for acting so childishly.
• You’ll hear the word fue a lot — a bamboo flute. Filming the troops from a low angle as they listen, views of the castle loom high above. Suddenly a gunshot rings out.
• The various other warlords are introduced with an establishing shot of their respective castles; first Ieyasu Tokugawa (Masayuki Yui), Nobunaga Oda (Daisuke Ryû, really terrific here) and finally — in wintry snow — an unnamed warlord, probably Kenshin Uesugi (Eiichi Kanakubo).
• Check out the burst of blue-white snowy brilliance as the latter opens up the castle window and Kurosawa cuts to the one of iconic shots in this film — a long line of samurai marching along a ridge in front of a setting sun. Half a dozen men lie dazed in the foreground.
• The use of color is consistently rich and surprising:
• When we first meet the young grandson, Takemaru (the adorable Kota Yui), he is wearing a blue kimono as brilliant as the sky, the gold emblems standing out in the color scheme;
• His second kimono (when he runs around playing “horsey”) is also gorgeous;
• The third one — when he is cuddled in the thief/double’s arms, as the servant Tsuchiya (Jinpachi Nezu) recites the story behind the meaning of the banner and its motto — is an unexpected burst of color: yellow and green, a white obi, and cinnamon red pant bottoms. The frame erupts like a rainbow, as the kid recites — which just the right amount of difficulty — the motto.
• Which is actually condensed from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (Chapter VII). In full: “When campaigning, be swift as the wind; in leisurely march, march, majestic as a forest; in raiding and plundering, like fire; in standing, firm as the mountains. As unfathomable as the clouds, move like a thunderbolt.”
• After Tsuchiya finishes the motto story, thief/double mutters, “Oh, I see!” but quickly reverts to form and turns to Takemura, saying “understand?”
• The thief seems to look forward to a fun-filled evening with the concubines when Nobukado tells them that the Lord cannot exert himself (“no riding!”)
• The dream. Kurosawa painted the backdrops himself.
• Why is Nobunaga a Christian? Because his enemies were Buddhists! The enemy of my enemy is my friend …
• A few decades later, Christian missionaries would be exiled, tortured or killed.
• It is wonderful to have the scenes with Takashi Shimura (Gyobu Talguchi, a Nobunaga deputy) restored in this 180-minute version. He says very little, as he was suffering from severe emphysema and died a year or two later …
• “DO NOT MOVE!” The thief/double has become Shingen!
• Note the pink circles around the thief’s eyes and how that bigger with each new atrocity.
• The montage with the dead bodies and the horses trying to stand up (no animal was injured) is memorable.
• Historical fact: The Takeda clan lost 10,000 men that day.
• The final shot: the thief’s body drifts by the motto banner, as the camera zooms in.

Film Rating (0-60):

58

The Extras

The Booklet

Forty-six page booklet featuring an essay by Peter Grilli; Tony Rayns’s interview with Kurosawa.The pages are interspersed with Kurosawa’s paintings.

Grilli:

“In Kagemusha, the energy of a passionate young artist and the genius of a mature master seem to reunite. The film is as much the triumph of the painter that Kurosawa had been as a youth as of the masterful playwright he had become. It also marks the beginning of the final chapter of his astonishing career as a director. Ran, Dreams, and the other works of his late years benefit from the intensely painterly approach to filmmaking he adopted in his long, painstaking preparations for Kagemusha.”

Rayns:

TR: “What do you see as the international possibilities for Japanese film?”

AK: “I believe that film is one of the best ways to help foreign countries understand Japan, and vice versa. I don’t think Japan is very well understood as yet — a TV series like Shogun wouldn’t be made if it were. I’m sure there will be more instances of coproductions with other countries. I think it’s important to establish a kind of global film culture. Marx wanted workers to unite! That’s the kind of effort we film directors should be making … basically, the present situation is chaotic, and nobody knows what direction the Japanese film industry will take. Nonfilm companies are proving increasingly ready to invest in film production. After all, they spend a great deal of money on advertising, and they must feel that getting their brand name up there on a cinema screen at the front of a feature is worthwhile. But the attitude of the established companies remains terribly passive. If they really don’t believe in the power or the profitability of films, then I think they should withdraw from the film industry entirely.”

DVD only: Biographical sketches by Donald Richie.

Kurosawa: “One day in winter, 1948, when I was twenty-four, my friend, the late composer Fumio Hayasaka, took me to the Toho Studios to watch the shooting of a film for which he was doing the score. On an elaborate open set of postwar streets, ruins, shops — so detailed it looked hardly different from the neighborhood outside the studio — a good-looking young man in a white suit and slicked-back hair was being directed by a tall, middle-aged man wearing a floppy hat.

During a break, Hayasaka introduced me. After our halting conversation, they went back to work. I spoke no Japanese then, and they, except for Hayasaka, no English. I watched and wondered who they were and what the film was about.

The young man in the white suit was Toshiro Mifune; the tall man in the hat was Kurosawa; and the film was Drunken Angel (1948) {Spine #413}.”

 Shintarô Katsu: “Katsu, backed up by his entourage, makes a big entrance. He strikes a Zatoichi pose, hands stretched out, eyeballs turned up until just the whites show — the blind swordsman himself. Then his eyes slide back into place, he gives his snorting laugh and cuffs his sidekicks into the room.

All smiles tonight. Kurosawa has chosen him to play the lead in Kagemusha. This is a role he very much wants. He wants to be a big international star, not just a little Japanese one. He has often been to Las Vegas, so he knows. It is really a big American star that he wants to be.

Sitting down, his buddies around him, he keeps the table in stitches. Las Vegas girl asked him if he liked it French fashion. He had no idea. She demonstrated. It tickled. He wanted to say no. English inadequate. So he said: I no like chewing gum.

Buddies collapse, general laughter. Another funny Las Vegas story. While they were making love, she or another asked if he was ready. Given typical Japanese confusion over ls and rs, he head wrong. I no lady, he said with indignation. I gentleman. Contingent howls its appreciation, several beat the table with the flats of their hands.”

Commentary

By Stephen Prince, author of The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa.

An indispensable book. A brilliant commentary:

• In the scene with the concubines, notice the shadow behind the thief. Perhaps, in this case, it is the late Shingen who is standing behind the thief (i.e., the thief acting more and more like the late lord).
• “Kurosawa is here giving history a more poetic inflection. History starts to recede, replaced by poetry and psychodrama.”
• “The ‘wine scene’ between Ieyasu and Nobunaga is pregnant with meaning.”
• Prince’s final comment:
• “In Kagemusha, Kurosawa has followed his beloved samurai world to the point of its extinction and his glance is a backward-looking one, full of nostalgia and full of yearning for those things that are no more — those things that are gone from this world and those things that were going from his career. He would make four more films, but except for Ran, he would never work on this kind of epic canvas.”

Lucas, Coppola, and Kurosawa

(19 mins., 2005) directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola discuss Kurosawa and their roles as executive producers of Kagemusha.

Their admiration is obvious.

Documentary

A 41-minute doc on the making of Kagemusha, part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create.

A typically wonderful entry from the series — which covers nearly all 30 films!

Image: Kurosawa’s Continuity

A 43-minute video piece reconstructing Kagemusha through Kurosaswa’s paintings and sketches.

This is Kurosawa’s vision of his film when he surely thought it would never get made. At least, he had painted it!

Commercials

A series of Suntory Whiskey ads made on the set of Kagemusha.

Fattening up the salary.

Gallery

Of storyboards painted by Kurosawa and images of their realization on-screen.

Theatrical trailers and teasers

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

58 + 37 =

95

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