KAGEMUSHA [THE SHADOW WARRIOR] (1980)
Synopsis
Kagemusha is an epic war film by Akira Kurosawa set in the Sengoku period of
Japa nese history that tells the story of a petty criminal who is taught to imperson-
ate a dying daimyō (warlord) to dissuade his enemies from attacking his now-
vulnerable clan. The daimyō is based on Takeda Shingen, and the film ends by
depicting the actual Battle of Nagashino in 1575.
Background
In the five years after the release of Dersu Uzala (1975), director Akira Kurosawa
(Seven Samurai) worked on developing three film proj ects: a samurai version of
King Lear entitled Ran ( Japa nese for Chaos); Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red
Death” (never filmed); and Kagemusha, a screenwriting collaboration with Masato
Ide about a petty thief who impersonates a feudal warlord. Kurosawa could not
secure funding for Kagemusha in Japan until the summer of 1978, when he met
with two of his greatest admirers: American directors George Lucas and Francis
Ford Coppola. After Lucas and Coppola persuaded 20th Century Fox to pre-
purchase foreign distribution rights for $1.5 million, Toho Co. Ltd. (Tokyo) put up
the bulk of the funding: 100 million yen ($5 million). With a $6.5 million bud get,
Kagemusha was the most expensive film made in Japan up to that time. It was also
the most meticulously planned. In the years spent finding financing Kurosawa
made hundreds of story board drawings and paintings mapping out the look of
every shot and scene. Location scouting for a movie set in 16th- century Japan
proved to be challenging; pervasive industrialization after World War II rendered
much of the country visually unsuitable for a period film. Kurosawa visited doz-
ens of medieval castles before choosing Himeji Castle (40 miles west of Kobe, on
Japan’s main island of Honshu), Iga- Ueno Castle (40 miles southeast of Kyoto, also
on Honshu), and Kumamoto Castle (on Japan’s most southwesterly island of
Kyushu). Battle scenes were filmed on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost and least
developed island, utilizing hundreds of hand- picked extras and 200 specially
trained horses, flown in from the United States. Many of the riders were female
members of vari ous Japa nese equestrian organ izations whom Kurosawa preferred
because he found them more daring than most men.
Production
As Kurosawa scholar Donald Richie notes, “Of all the films of Kurosawa, Kagemusha
was the most disaster- ridden” (Richie, 1996, p. 205). Kurosawa’s cinematographer,