Kagemusha

Kagemusha (影武者 literally "Shadow Warrior") is a 1980 film by Akira Kurosawa. In Japanese, kagemusha is a term used to denote a political decoy. The films stars Tatsuya Nakadai.
==Plot==
The film opens with a shot of three men, practically indistinguishable from each other: Shingen, his brother Nobukado, and a thief whom Nobukado met by chance and spared from crucifixion, believing the thief's uncanny resemblance to Shingen would prove useful. Shingen agrees that he would prove useful as a double, and they decide to use the thief as akagemusha.
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
Nobukado presents the thief to the generals, 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 Oda Nobunaga 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 cover-up 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.
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 awe even the bodyguards and Wakashū, who knew Shingen best. When he must preside over a clan council and is unexpectedly asked for his decision on a military matter, he cleverly relies on the clan motto, which identifies Shingen with an unmoving mountain.
When Tokugawa and Oda Nobunaga launch an attack against the territory of the Takeda clan, Shingen's son, Katsuyori, launches a counterattack against the advice of other generals. Thekagemusha is forced to lead reinforcements to the 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, and Katsuyori, despite having been disinherited, takes over the clan.
In full control of the Takeda army, Katsuyori leads an ill-advised attack against Oda Nobunaga, who controls Kyoto, resulting in the Battle of Nagashino. Wave after wave of cavalry and infantry are cut down by volleys of matchlock fire, effectively wiping out the Takeda. During this scene, much of the battle is offscreen. Although the charge of the Takeda army and the volley of fire from Nobunaga's soldiers is seen, the actual death of the Takeda men is not shown until the battle is over, and the viewer sees a vast scene of carnage as more time is given to the aftermath. The kagemusha, who has followed the Takeda army, witnesses the slaughter. In a final show of loyalty, he takes up a lance and makes a futile charge against Oda's fortifications, ultimately dying for the Takeda clan. The final image is of the kagemusha's bullet-riddled body being washed away down a river, next to the flag of the Takeda clan.
==Production==
George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola are credited at the end of the film as executive producers in the international version. This is because they convinced 20th Century Fox to make up a shortfall in the film's budget when the original producers, Toho Studios, could not afford to complete the film. In return, 20th Century Fox received the international distribution rights to the film.
Kurosawa originally cast the boisterous comic actor Shintaro Katsu in the title role. Katsu left the production, however, before the first day of shooting was over; in an interview for the Criterion Collection DVD, executive producer Coppola states that Katsu angered Kurosawa by arriving with his own camera crew to record Kurosawa's filmmaking methods. It is unclear whether Katsu was fired or left of his own accord, but he was replaced by Tatsuya Nakadai, a well-known actor who had appeared in a number of Kurosawa's previous films. Nakadai played both the kagemusha and the lord whom he impersonated.
Kurosawa wrote a part in Kagemusha for his longtime regular actor Takashi Shimura, and Kagemusha was the last Kurosawa film in which Shimura appeared. However, the scene in which he plays a servant who accompanies a western doctor to a meeting with Shingen was cut from the foreign release of the film. The Criterion Collection DVD release of the film restored this scene as well as approximately another twenty minutes worth of footage which had not been seen previously in the West, most notably a scene where Uesugi Kenshin makes his only appearance in the film.
According to Lucas, Kurosawa used 5000 extras for the final battle sequence, filming for a whole day, then he cut it down to 90 seconds in the final release. Many beautiful special effects, and a number of scenes that filled holes in the story, landed on the "cutting-room floor."
==Cast==
*Tatsuya Nakadai as Takeda Shingen and the Kagemusha 
*Tsutomu Yamazaki as Takeda Nobukado 
*Kenichi Hagiwara as Takeda Katsuyori 
*Jinpachi Nezu as Tsuchiya Sohachiro 
*Hideji Ōtaki as Yamagata Masakage 
*Daisuke Ryu as Oda Nobunaga 
*Masayuki Yui as Tokugawa Ieyasu 
*Kaori Momoi as Otsuyanokata
*Mitsuko Baisho as Oyunokata 
*Hideo Murota as Baba Nobuharu
*Takayuki Shiho as Naitō Masatoyo 
*Kōji Shimizu as Atobe Katsusuke 
*Noburo Shimizu as Hara Masatane 
*Sen Yamamoto as Oyamada Nobushige 
*Shuhei Sugimori as Kōsaka Masanobu 
*Takashi Shimura as Taguchi Gyobu 
*Eiichi Kanakubo as Uesugi Kenshin 
*Francis Selleck as Priest
*Jirō Yabuki as Equestrian
*Kamatari Fujiwara as Doctor
==Reception==
Kagemusha was the number one Japanese film on the domestic market in 1980, earning ¥2.7 billion in distribution income.
==Awards==
At the 1980 Cannes Film Festival, Kagemusha shared the  Palme d'Or with All That Jazz. Kagemusha was nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Art Direction (Yoshirō Muraki) and Best Foreign Language Film). The film won the César Award in 1981 for Best Foreign Film.
*Academy Awards (USA)
**Nominated: Best Art Direction (Yoshirō Muraki)
**Nominated: Best Foreign Language Film
*BAFTA Awards (UK)
**Won: Best Costume Design (Seiichiro Momosawa)
**Won: Best Direction (Akira Kurosawa)
**Nominated: Best Cinematography (Takao Saitō and Masaharu Ueda)
**Nominated: Best Film
*Cannes Film Festival (France)
**Won: Golden Palm (tied with All That Jazz)
*César Awards (France)
**Won: Best Foreign Film
*David di Donatello Awards (Italy)
**Won: Best Director - Foreign Film (Akira Kurosawa)
**Won: Best Producer - Foreign Film (Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas; tied with Hungaro Film for Angi Vera)
*Golden Globe Awards (USA)
**Nominated: Best Foreign Film
Category:1980 films
Category:1980s films
Category:Japanese films
Category:Japanese-language films
Category:English-language French films
Category:Films
Category:Drama films
Category:Japanese drama films
Category:Films with screenplays by Akira Kurosawa
Category:Films directed by Akira Kurosawa
Category:Toho films
Category:20th Century Fox films