Kagemusha
Tags: bleak

Plot synopsis:
In Japan's Sengoku period, Takeda Shingen, daimyō of the Takeda clan, meets with his brother Nobukado, and an unnamed thief whom the latter met by chance and spared from crucifixion due to the thief's uncanny resemblance to Shingen. The brothers then agree that he would prove useful as a double, and they decide to use the thief as a kagemusha.
Later, Shingen's army has besieged a castle of Tokugawa Ieyasu. When Shingen visits the battlefield to hear a mysterious nightly flute player, he is shot by a sniper. Mortally wounded, he orders his generals to keep his death a secret for three years. Shingen later dies while being carried over a mountain pass, with only a small group of witnesses. Meanwhile, Shingen's rivals Oda Nobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Uesugi Kenshin are each shown contemplating about Shingen's supposed passing.
Nobukado presents the thief to Shingen's generals (many of the renowned Twenty-Four Generals of Takeda Shingen), proposing to have this kagemusha impersonate Shingen full-time. At first, even the thief is unaware of Shingen's death, until he tries to break into a huge jar, believing it to contain treasure, and instead finds Shingen's preserved corpse. After this act, the generals decide they cannot trust the thief and set him free.
The Takeda leaders secretly dump the jar with Shingen's corpse into Lake Suwa. Spies working for Tokugawa and his ally Nobunaga Oda witness the disposal of the jar and, suspecting that Shingen has died, go to report the death. The thief, however, overhearing the spies, goes to offer his services, hoping to be of some use to Shingen in death. The Takeda clan preserves the deception by saying they were making an offering of sake to the god of the lake.
The spies follow the Takeda army as they march home from the siege. Although they suspect that Shingen has died, they are later convinced by the kagemusha's performance.
Returning home, the kagemusha successfully fools Shingen's concubines and grandson. By imitating Shingen's gestures and learning more about him, the kagemusha begins to take on the persona of Shingen, and is able to impress bodyguards and fool Takemaru, Takeda Katsuyori's son and Shingen's grandson, who was very close with Shingen. When the kagemusha must preside over a clan council to plan how to respond to provocative attacks made by Tokugawa against Takeda border castles, he is instructed by Nobukado to not speak until Nobukado brings the generals to a consensus, whereupon the kagemusha will simply agree with the generals' plan and dismiss the council. However, Katsuyori is incensed by the general's decision to have an impostor play the role of his late father, instead of allowing him to inherit the leadership of the clan. Katsuyori thus decides to deliberately infuriate the generals by testing the kagemusha in front of the council, as the majority of the attendants are not aware that Shingen is dead. Katsuyori directly asks the kagemusha what course of action the "lord thinks" should be taken. After a long moment of tense silence, the kagemusha replies, "Do not move. A mountain does not move." before concluding the meeting, a reference to the motto on the fūrinkazan standard which identifies Shingen with an immovable mountain. The kagemusha's convincing improvisation further impresses the generals and secures their confidence in the kagemusha as well as further reinforcing the hostility between Katsuyori and the rest of the clan leadership.
In 1573, Oda Nobunaga is mobilizing his forces to attack Azai Nagamasa, continuing his campaign in central Honshu to maintain his control of Kyoto against the growing opposition of a coalition of rival clans, which it is feared the Takeda will align themselves with. When the Tokugawa and Oda clans launch an attack on Takeda territory, Katsuyori begins a counter-offensive against the advice of other generals. The kagemusha is forced to lead reinforcements to the 1574 Battle of Takatenjin, and helps inspire the troops to victory.
In a fit of overconfidence, the kagemusha attempts to ride Shingen's spirited horse. When he falls off, those who rush to help him see that he does not have their lord's battle scars, and he is revealed as an impostor. The thief is driven out of the palace in disgrace, and Katsuyori takes over the clan. Oda and Tokugawa, sensing weakness in the Takeda clan leadership, are emboldened to begin a full-scale offensive into the Takeda homeland to permanently remove the clan as an obstacle to their further expansion.
Now in full control of the Takeda army, Katsuyori leads the counter-offensive against Nobunaga, resulting in the Battle of Nagashino. Wave after wave of attacking Takeda cavalry and infantry are cut down by volleys of arquebus fire from Oda troops deployed behind wooden stockades, effectively eliminating the Takeda army. The exiled kagemusha, who has followed the Takeda army, witnesses the slaughter. In a final show of loyalty, he takes up a spear and makes a futile charge against the Oda lines. Mortally wounded, the kagemusha attempts to retrieve the fūrinkazan which had fallen into a river, but succumbs to his wounds as he wades into the water, grasping for the standard. His body floats past it as the film concludes with a long shot of the sunken fūrinkazan as the credits roll.

Review: Kagemusha (shadow warrior in Japanese) is the story of a thief who is to be hanged, but is saved by a warlord's brother, Katsuyori Takeda, because of a peculiar resemblance to the king Shingen Takeda.
Neither he, nor any modern man trying to live an identity larger than himself--including the artist who, like the kagemusha, is creating a shadow of the ideal--can replace this feudal ideal which was superseded (literally, massacred at the end) starting over 400 years ago by Christianized and technologized decadence, represented by Nobunaga and Ieyasu.
I really think the problem with these two movies, and the reason I like them less than the average Kurosawa film, was that the big budget in these later films actually HURT them, as too much emphasis was placed on effects and dialog was purely secondary.So, in summary, I am the odd-ball that didn't love this film.
After spending a decade (or so) in solitary confinement from the Japanese Film Industry Akira Kurosawa returns to make his semi-masterpiece "Kagemusha", which he called a dress-rehearsal for "Ran", made in 1985.Kagemusha is, probably, the best example of cinematic overkill where nobody actually cares.
However, when the real Shingen is shot and killed by a sharpshooter, the Kagemusha is forced to take all responsibilities of the lifestyle of the lord such as commanding his armies, outwitting his enemies, and serving as a father-figure to his grandson.The Kagemusha is played by veteran actor Tatsuya Nakadai, whom fought against Toshiro Mifune in both "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro" and would later work on Akira Kurosawa's highly acclaimed 1985 film "Ran." He also plays the real Takeda Shinge in the opening portion of the film and Nakadai is utterly brilliant in the way he switches between both roles even though these two men are, in a way, identical.
The most brilliant element of the film's human level is the way Nakadai bonds with the grandson of the man whom he is impersonating and the way he discovers that he is not only a better father figure, but a better person, than the actual ruler.Regardless of your opinion on the movie, there is one thing everybody agrees on: there is beauty painted all over the screen.
Well, he hardly got support and in this case he needed financial assistance from Western admirers George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, but when he did have the money and the control, Kurosawa was relentlessly brilliant.The running time of "Kagemusha" will question the full extent of its audience as will the scenes where very little happens for a while, but for those who appreciate a good movie and have three hours to spare, this is a tremendously enthralling experience.
"Kagemusha" boasts a lot of exterior display, but unlike a great many other movies that have the same accolade of looking good, Kurosawa's movie shows beauty beneath as well, on the human level, encompassing the audience with a heck of a story.
But when watching this earlier picture's awesome pageantry and historical re-enactment, one's likely response is "some rehearsal!" Kagemusha takes Kurosawa back to his biggest hits of the 1950s, being set in war-torn feudal Japan.
Kagemusha contains very few close-ups, with even key dialogue scenes filmed with vast gaps between camera and actors, and objective god-shots for the busier scenes.And yet there are similarities here with Kurosawa's much earlier pictures, especially in the director's aesthetic use of movement and stillness within the frame.
The opening scene, filmed all in one shot, shows Lord Shingen, the impersonator (both played by Tatsuya Nakadai) and Nobukado (Tsotomu Yamazaki) all sat in the throne room.
This long unbroken take means the room, with its great floral crest, is imposed into our minds, and resonates later on when we see Nakadai in the same room, now instated as the lord.And despite the distances between camera and cast, the colourful costumes against plain backdrops really puts an emphasis on the people in Kagemusha, allowing them to express themselves through body language more than facial expression.
After six years of break -his last great film, "Dersu Uzala" had made in the Soviet Union in 1974 - Akira Kurosawa had the support of influential Americans Francis Coppola and George Lucas, who interceded with the Fox to that funded his project "Kagemusha" in exchange for worldwide distribution rights of the film.Everything that came after the film had the technical aspect of a great production: Hundreds of extras, a carefully staged appropriate to the sixteenth century, apparel obtained from museum collections true, picture of high relief, a majestic soundtrack performed by a full symphony, and a protagonist of many carats and was Tatsuya Nakadai.
A perfect picture of a happy society disappeared, which, Kurosawa is able to look with loving eyes as critics.The humble thief character, able to supplant the warlord Shingen Takeda, is charming and full history a warmth and human depth, as expected, the feudal lords never understand, and only Takemaru, the little heir to the throne, discovers the emotional force within him and get to share with him a sense emerged from the heart.
I empathize deeply with this thief who assumes the position of double for a very important warlord - a role that reaches epic dimensions as this `shadow warrior' eventually loses his own identity, becoming a sacrificial figure in the demise of one of Japan's great sixteenth century clans.Kurosawa's `Rashomon' (1950) explored the nature of perspective, truth, and reality, and may have resonated with the Japanese people of the decade in which it had been made - a time of recovery from the devastating defeat in World War II, and the wrenching pain associated with the failure of traditional Japanese moral, ethical and social values.
There followed  another long period of inactivity before American directors, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, long time admirers, helped secure funding for `Kagemusha' as a joint project of Toho Films and 20th Century Fox which was released in Kurosawa's 70th year.
But the Nobunaga-Ieyasu forces used muskets on a large scale, and the result was a catastrophic loss for the Takeda clan.`Kagemusha' opens with a long shot of Shingen flanked to his right by his brother, Nobukado Takeda, with the thief to his left in the foreground.
The culmination of which we will eventually see in the film he shot afterwards; "RAN"."Kagemusha" is also a bit of a departure for Kurosawa in that it deals with real historical events and characters.
The script is almost Shakespearean in quality, the characters are multidimensional with the relationship between the Lord's men and the thief Kagemusha's most fascinating assets and the lead performance of Tatsuya Nakadai is outstanding, as far as I'm concerned one of the finest lead performances of any Kurasawa film that isn't Toshio Mifune.
The cinematography and epic scope are at times simply stunning but something still haunts this motion picture, the "what could have been?" In Kagemusha, the lead roles of Lord Shingen Takeda and the thief, were written for the actor Shintarô Katsu but due to an on-set falling out with Akira Kurosawa, Katsu was promptly fired and Tatsuya Nakadai was quickly re-cast.
He may have been remembered as one of Japan's great leading men rather than the popular yet domestic star in a series of Zatoichi movies.What would have Shintarô Katsu brought to the roles of Lord Shingen Takeda and the thief, Kagemusha?
Visually mesmerizing, acting is powerful, story editing is exceptional, but Kagemusha bugged me because of its unsatisfying battle scenes owing to weird editing and vision which contradicts the big master Kurosawa.
He's the Kagemusha, the Shadow Warrior, the pawn who impersonated the mountain.And only Akira Kurosawa, the director who can literally move mountains could make such a magnificent-looking and once again thought-provoking film, his only Golden Palm winner; the story of a thief impersonating a lord, a lord so cautious about the eventual demise of the Takeda clan that he demanded his death to be hidden for three years, it is more dangerous to waste a death than a life precisely because life is valuable, his is too valuable to be exposed."Kagemusha" is Kurosawa back to his Samurai roots, that forged his international legacy.
But while a lesser director would have turned this into a gimmick, Kurosawa makes it a source of questioning for the enemy and a burden on the shoulders of every protagonist, including the Kagemusha himself played by Tatsuya Nakadai, the handsome gun-owner from "Yojimbo".The actor plays both the double and the original and in both cases, he finds the perfect note.
What an irony that a pawn is impersonating a mountain, and the ending shows that nothing is immovable, no one can stay static forever but it's precisely for his desire to get off his father's shadow and move that the Takeda heir will accelerate the downfall.Not to spoil the ending, I would say that it does close the arc of the Kagemusha in the most powerful way, one that makes the war and the character study converge into a point of existential meaningfulness only to be swept off by the march of history and that even mountains can move, they move slowly yet they move.
Film Review: "Kagemusha" (1980)Winning the "Palme d'Or" shared with Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz" (1979) on May 23rd 1980 at Cannes Film Festival in its 33rd edition, director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) accumulates all his directorial signatures since "Rashomon" (1950) to adapt an originally screen-written masterpiece on thief impersonating a dying king-like figure alongside Japanese moviestars Tsutomu Yamazaki and Tatsuya Nakadai in a legendary double role as medieval warlord Shingen Takeda as the title-given imposter to take his place in a troublesome kingdom to tragic as high-suspense drama indulging ends, when well-researched art directions by ingenious Kurosawa-collaborator production designer Yoshiro Muraki (1924-2009) delivers with visual splendors to be hypnotized from that even international distribution-securing producers George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola must have admit that "Kagemusha" remains world cinema at its best to be discovered again in an all-too-fast moving environment of speeding visuals from any digital device coming our way these days.Copyright 2018 Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC.
Will Shingen be able to convince the people that he is Kagemusha and hold up the kingdom in a time of war?The acting is wonderful and will make you fall in love with the lead actor and want to look up the rest of his work.
Tatsuya gives memorable performances as both the real Shingen and the Kagemusha also the actors who play the Takeda generals performances are also nothing to be sneezed at.This is as we can expect from not just a great director like Akira Kurosawa but also him as a descendant of samurai.Definitely recommended for those interested in the Sengoku Jidai (Age of the Country at War) or for fans of samurai films in general..
As others have commented, the director's use of colour and light is simply stunning.Watching the film again also helped crystallize in my mind another pacing element director Kurosawa seems to have completely made his own: the balance between dialogue heavy scenes that drive the characters and offer exposition for the story, and those scenes that are visually driven.
The artificial environment of it makes the film look sketchy, as it was in fact, for it is known that Kurosawa was preparing the big project (Ran)-The editing was great; The framing he gives is mostly still, his eye works like that of a painter, but the editing sequences all shots perfectly and it makes us believe that after one certain shot, the only possible shot that makes the thing work is the next one.
A Shadow Cannot Exist Without the Man. Kurosawa's beautiful film Kagemusha is a meditation on subjects that have haunted the director throughout his career in cinema: the doppelganger or double, (which brings to question identity and how identity is formed, and where identity is located; is it in appearance, world views, actions, attitudes or loves?
What if one's choices were different?) transformation (all Kurosawa heroes go through a transformation) the tragedy of war (note the elegiac images of horses struggling in death throes in the aftermath of the massacre at the film's conclusion) and despair (Kuroswa has investigated despair as few other filmmakers have...from The Lower Depths and Stray Dog to Ran, many of his films meditate deeply on human hearts without hope).I cannot help but think that Kagemusha's deep feeling comes from the autobiographical: a man (the thief, played by Tatsuya Nakadai) must assume the role of the Lord (or, why not...they say it in the film..."Tenno"...or Emperor...used to describe Kurosaw himself).Kuroaswa must have wondered, in his time of financial difficulty, after the dismissal of "Dodes-Kaden", after his suicide attempt, after losing his status, during his struggles to find financing for Kagemusha...he must have thought about what it is to assume a role of great authority, and to be dismissed from the role that gave his life meaning.Tatsuya Nakadai being ejected forcibly from the castle...retainers throwing clods of mud and stones after him, like a stray dog being pelted and driven from the gates of a house...maybe Kurosawa felt that this is how his life had been.
While watching Kagemusha your subconscious receives more information through photography, actor expressions and simple situations than from story-line.Nakadai's acting is spell-bounding, the scene where he portrays the 'sad look' of the impersonated one is, to me, one of cinema's most fascinating character shots.
The dusty soldiers in the foreground, with the army marching from right to left in the middle of the shot against the low sun and blood red sky...the 'offering of sake to the lake god' and the layers of observers...the decimation of Wind, Fire and Forest...visual feasts, all, with the elements stacked a good three layers deep (and sometimes more).The 'story' is really about the triumph of Western storytelling over traditional forms - Shakespeare over Noh theater, Catholic benediction over indigenous faith, even red wine over sake...but especially Western muskets over cavalry, lances and Sun Tzu's war philosophies.The viewer detects strong self-reference in the craft: Kurosawa as a 'thief' of ideas hired to play another character, within an sustained illusion, then cast out by the elites when his usefulness expires..
"Kagemusha" is Akira Kurosawa's late color masterpiece about a Japanese Emperor (Tatsuya Nakadai) who employs a thief to be his double (sort of like one of Saddam Hussein's!).
Kurosawa chooses the back-end of the 16th century as his setting, using realistic historical events as a backdrop to the action.I was unfamiliar with the work of Akira Kurosawa but am now quite interested in seeing more of his films (I confess to having never watched "Seven Samurai," "Ran," "Yojimbo," "Rashomon," etc.)."Kagemusha" did not disappoint me.
I love the epic nature of the film and in particular its stunning contrast of color - Kurosawa was still experimenting with the possibilities of color in this film and the opening sequence - a messenger zooming past hordes of painted Samurai - is a good example of the starkness he brings to the project.The acting is all very good, I couldn't understand the Japanese, but you know a performance is excellent when the actor manages to evoke feelings from the viewer even when he or she cannot understand the dialect.The direction is solid with the action sequences well staged, the battles convincing and extravagant.
Stunning in its visual beauty, there are moments in this film so perfectly realized that when I FIRST saw it, I had to stop my machine, back up the tape and watch them again!The story itself is superb, a common thief is a perfect double for a warrior king, saved from the gallows to act as a stand in to confuse enemy troops.
It's time to rectify the situation.Kagemusha - "The Shadow Warrior" - is the story of a lowly thief enlisted to serve as warlord Shingen Takeda's double.
Although Kurosawa himself thought of this film as a mere dress rehearsal,a preparation for "Ran", "Kagemusha" carries its own distinctive essence which makes it a work in the same category as its successor.The story deals around one of the greatest feudal lords and generals in Japan's history, Takeda Shingen, showing his unexpected and untimely demise.
Another samurai epic by the master of the genre Akira Kurosawa; which, I find to be a mostly fulfilling attempt.The film follows the life of a peasant thief named Kagemusha who happens to look like the warlord of the Takeda clan Shingen.
Having watched his later "Ran" (1985) yesterday and then having watched this movie today, "Kagemusha" is very much a "dress rehearsal" for "Ran" since it can be seen that many ideas/themes from this film were later used on "Ran." (Having watched both movies, however, I can conclude that "Ran" is the better movie.) "Kagemusha" (which means "shadow warrior") and is set over the course of a two-year period between 1573 and 1575 in Japan, concerns a petty, unkempt thief (Tatsuya Nakadai) who is plucked from imminent execution to be the double for the 16th-century warlord Shingen Takeda (also played by Nakadai), due to his striking resemblance to him.
Kagemusha is not as well know as some of Kurosawa's other films, but it is still excellent viewing and shows that he was Japan's best film director.
It is a strong story with American financial backing, yet still a very Japanese film.Kagemusha is a Japanese word meaning both Shadow Warrior or the Double: this tell you a lot about the plot before you start.
During KAGEMUSHA's "Development Hell" period, Kurosawa made over 200 color drawings of key scenes in the film.
Watching Akira Kurosawa's three hour long epic color film (his third) from 1980, Kagumusha (The Shadow Warrior) reminded me of the historical plays of William Shakespeare.
Usually, such dual roles are phoned in, but one can sense the difference in the two characters, even long after Shingen is dead.All in all, Kagemusha is a very good film, with some great scenes and moments.
Nobukado desires to make the thief into a kagemusha, &#24433;&#27494;&#32773;, shadow warrior, like himself so he can act as a double for Shingen.