From Text to Film: Culture, Color and Context in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran AnneMarie Donahue

“[Ran] would round out my life’s work in film, I will put all of my remaining energy into it.” — Akira Kurosawa

It was 1985. Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa was nearing seventy-three and had lost all hope of finishing his latest film.Ran, which means “chaos” in Japanese, was a remake of an ancient script based on Shakespeare’s King Lear and would cost approximately 12 million dollars, an unheard of sum for a production. Kurosawa had come out of a five-year retirement to direct this film, whose script had taken him over a decade to write. Although the production was saved when two companies, Greenwich Film Productions and Herald Ace Productions, stepped forward to finance the film, this epic would cost him much more than money and time. His health, which was shaky at best, was destroyed by the film. Ran, however, would go on to become one of Kurosawa’s greatest films and be listed on the American Film Institute’s “Top One Hundred Movies of All Time.” Ran would even bring Kurosawa his first and only nomination for an Academy Award (which he would ultimately lose to Sydney Pollack for Out of Africa). My essay examines Ran’s connections to Shakespeare’s King Lear, its significance to Kurosawa as filmmaker and its relationship to the culture of Japan from which the director speaks.

Straddling Cultures: The Japanese contexts of Ran Despite the fact that it is an adaptation and does not use the Shakespearean text, it can be argued that Ran is Kurosawa’s closest interpretation of any of Shakespeare’s plays and his most successful. Ran should be considered as an adaptation of King Lear, not a translation. In fact, Kurosawa had at first begun writing the screenplay without any intention of making a connection to Shakespeare’s Lear. He had been known for his Japanese versions of two other Shakespearean classics. First, Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru (1960) or The Bad Sleep Well, Kurosawa’s version of Hamlet, was recreated as a modern day gangster movie. Unfortunately Japanese audiences did not easily embrace Hamlet’s stalled and stuttered action as the Anglo-Saxon audiences did, a reaction that’s understandable when the two cultures are examined. Japanese culture, based on familial loyalty would not idealize a gangster character who struggles with his own ambition over his assumed duty to his father. Japanese audiences had viewed Hamlet’s inaction to avenge his father as impotence as opposed to the European audiences’ traditional understanding (or viewing) of Hamlet’s indecisive nature as being interestingly “torn” or misguided. Nor would the Japanese audiences tolerate a character with confused sexual identity and sexual aggression towards his mother. Hamlet’s attraction to his mother, which is not a common issue addressed in Japanese culture, is one root of his

83 problem. Therefore, the Oedipus complex, heavily played up in other film versions of Hamlet like Olivier’s and Zeffirelli’s, was ignored by Kurosawa. Kumunosu Jo (1957), his film version of Macbeth, was set in the Tokugawa Shogunate and contained many of Macbeth’s themes. Honor and loyalty are highly prized but rare attributes in Japanese culture, and the play Macbeth, where jealousy and ambition cause the downfall of not only the individuals who possess them but also the entire community that those individuals inhabit, fits well within Japanese cultural contexts. In Kumunosu-Jo, Kurosawa changed the dialogue to accommodate his viewers. However, he was able to keep many of the play’s themes intact. These themes, mainly concerning jealousy and ambition, were issues that a post-World War II Japan was very interested in examining. Kurosawa, whose father was a soldier, had been in college during the war. Although he himself had escaped service, he did feel ashamed of his own lack of heroism during the war, as he revealed in his personal memoir, Something Like an Autobiography. Kurosawa could not relate completely to Macbeth, a warlord, just as he could not relate completely to Hamlet. But in Ran’s central character, Hidetora, a figure for the tortured King Lear, Kurosawa ultimately found a sympathetic character. Even though Ran is not a direct translation of King Lear, there are some important commonalities to consider. What is strikingly similar to Shakespeare’s play is the rage of Hidetora at his youngest child, here cast as a son, instead of the daughter, Cordelia. Just as Lear is outraged at his daughter’s lack of love, when he asks for a public demonstration of it, Hidetora is appalled by his son’s apparent lack of loyalty. Both hold misconceived notions of family kinship that ultimately cost Lear and Hidetora their sanity and lives. Although in Ran Kurosawa eliminated the entire Shakespearean dialogue of necessity, the cultural norms of Lear remained; Japanese society was able to embrace the story of an aging, war mongering king who becomes the victim of his own impotence and corrupted children. Because Japan honors the concept of loyalty and fealty, audiences reacted strongly against the central challenge posed by Lear’s elder children, who view his kingship and seniority as mere mantles to be cast and shelved at the sunset of a leader’s and father’s life. To the Japanese audience, Lear’s initial actions in abdicating his authority are not only foolish, but ultimately, fatally dangerous to himself and his kingdom. In another interesting context, Watsuji Tetsuro, a Japanese philosopher, believes that although in the modern Western view, self and environment are opposing terms, in Japanese culture they are seen as interactive. Lear finds himself at the mercy of the weather after being thrown out by his daughters in the famous heath scene in Act 3, Scenes 2-4 of the play, and identifies nature with the storm in his mind: Thou think’st ‘tis much that this contentious storm Invades us to the skin. So ‘tis to thee, But where the greater malady is fix’d, The lesser is scarce felt. Thou’ldst shun a bear, But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea, Thou’ldst meet the bear i’ the mouth. When the mind’s free, The body’s delicate: the tempest in my mind Doth from my senses take all feeling else Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude! (3.4.6-14)

84 In Kurosawa’s film, Hidetora is subjected to the elements and confusion of a maze because he has created that confusion. In a way, Kurosawa is implying that Hidetora is responsible for the physical environment, not the situation alone, in which he finds himself. This idea both parallels and extends Shakespeare’s notion of the identification of man and environment as explored in the heath scene of Lear and Lear’s response to the storm, while embracing Japanese philosophy concerning man’s relationship to his environment. In filming Lear/Hidetora’s struggle, Kurosawa could have been speaking of his own career. He completed this film at age seventy-four. He had never been acknowledged by the main stream American Critics, or the foreign press. His movies in Japan were viewed as “too Hollywood” while American audiences had always seen them as a “foreign film”—ironic, because Kurosawa based many of his Samurai movies off of American Westerns, which were filmed by Italians. Much like in the American and “Spaghetti” Westerns, which Kurosawa loved, the main character is an extension of his environment. The portrayal of an emasculated man was not a new idea to the Japanese society. To put Ran into its cultural context also asks us to be familiar with Japanese history. The history of the Tokugawa Shogunite was both peaceful and dictatorial. After decades of war, the shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa unified Japan. Tokugawa believed firmly that the influence of foreigners had caused the fighting and violence; as a consequence he sealed the borders of Japan which then entered a period of isolation that would last until the latter half of the 1800s. Under Tokugawa rule, Japanese arts, music and language flourished. However, the samurai, who were used to fighting, became useless. This is the comparison Kurosawa makes with Hidetora, a samurai past his prime, who has no right to live out his years in retirement. He should teach a successor, and then commit seppuku, ritual suicide. Japan’s post-World War II context adds another layer of reference. This film came out in 1985, Kurosawa, and many from his generation remembered, with shame, the failure of the Japanese Empire. The educational programs set up in Japan taught America’s victory during World War II as liberation for Japan from their warlord Emperor Hirohito. However, the generation that lived through the war, suffered its deprivations, survived the horrors of the bombings, only to tolerate American GIs re-structuring their government and culture didn’t feel “liberated.”

From Text to Film: Lear to Ran Ran opens with Hidetora, the head of the Ichimonji clan, along with his three sons, Taro, Jiro, and Saburo, his ministers and two most formidable foes now turned friends, all gathered together and out to hunt wild boars. Hidetora and his ministers, who are very advanced in age, cannot catch a boar. Initially his sons, who are of course much younger, misinterpret this as impotence due to age. However, the point of this activity is not necessarily to catch, but to pursue the boar. The idea that physical exertion can take away the presence of the physical world and put the body on a path to Buddha Amita, valuable in itself in Japanese philosophy, is often central to this film. Much like Lear, Hidetora desires to retire from his life. He informs his sons, ministers and friends of this wish and quickly divides his land, all the while self-assured

85 that his sons will follow in his advice of remaining strongly united. Kurosawa based his film not only on the text of King Lear but also from a medieval Japanese tale of the samurai Moori Motonari and the three arrows (Melchior 45). Motonari gave each son a single arrow and ordered him to break it. They followed their father’s orders with great success. He then handed the first son three arrows and asked him to break the set. He could not and passed the arrows to the second son who also could not break them. The arrows came to the final son who could not break the arrows but understood the lesson: if all three banded together they would be strong and when separated or quarreling they would be weakened. Kurosawa begins his movie with the same legend. Hidetora hands three single arrows to his sons, who are able to break them. He then combines the three and challenges the sons to break the arrows together. The first two sons, understanding what their father wants to see, mimic an inability to break the arrows when combined. The youngest son realizes his father’s folly and swiftly uses his knee to break the three arrows proclaiming “There are many ways to break an arrow!” Hidetora is upset with his son, Saburo, for what seems like flippancy, just as Lear is upset with Cordelia, for apparent disrespect. However, it is Hidetora’s adversary, Fujimaki, who understands the brilliance of the third son and the dangers of the first two. Hidetora, who was a war mongering leader, wishes to retire from his reign after a startling dream. He decides that his three sons will split the kingdom equally but should answer to the eldest son as head ruler. When the third son, Saburo points out the folly of this plot, insisting that the elder two brothers are placating the “old man” simply to get his lands, he shows his awareness of Hidetora’s vulnerability in the political sphere. Hidetora has made many enemies in his day who were alert for signs of weakness to reclaim their lands. Saburo also argues that his father cannot “retire” because the sons are not ready or even fit to rule. Yet, Hidetora is convinced that his third son is disloyal and banishes him along with his most valued advisor Tango. When Saburo and Tango leave, Hidetora agrees to settle his kingdom to his first son, giving a smaller kingdom to the second. Hidetora states he will live in an outer tower and retain the title of Great Lord. However, Saburo’s predictions come true almost immediately. Powerfully symbolized by visuals in the film, Hidetora watches as his wives must kneel and make way for his daughter-in-law, another prisoner married off to Taro. Within a day, Taro, the first son, realizes that his father cannot live with him and forces him to move out, in the same way Lear’s daughter Goneril did. This was at the insistence of Taro’s wife, Kaede, who should have no rank in this house. Kaede is less than a prisoner of war; she is the humiliated and defeated daughter of a dead enemy. Marrying her to his son was only a political move to legitimize Hidetora’s claim to the land and castle. In her act of revenge, it is Kaede who actually makes the final sword strike against her father- in-law, forcing her husband to draft a contract and forcing her father-in-law through her husband to submit to loyalty and obedience to his son. Hidetora, humiliated and infuriated, moves his massive family and staff onto the land of his second son, but Jiro is already plotting to overthrow his older brother. He

86 receives Hidetora, but does not allow his men into the castle, claiming that Taro had forbidden him from doing so in a parallel of Lear’s daughters dismissing his knights. Before meeting with Jiro, Hidetora meets with his second daughter-in-law, Lady Sue, a positive character who practices physical spirituality. Praying daily, early in the morning to Buddha Amita, Lady Sue seeks the spiritual strength to forgive her father- in-law, Hidetora, who slaughtered her entire family, burnt down her castle and forced her to marry his second son, Jiro. What Hidetora fails to recognize is that he never provided a role model for peaceful leadership, or loyalty. In fact, his career as a king has been dedicated to quite the opposite, as seen in his relationship to Hidetora’s daughters-in-law, Lady Kaede and Lady Sue. In the course of the story, Hidetora goes on to endure hardships and humiliations similar to those Lear is subjected to, by both his own hand and those of his sons. In the end, Hidetora is saved by his only loyal son, Saburo, who looks to his father-in-law, or adopted father, for real guidance. Tragically, Hidetora and Saburo’s reunion is short lived, because Saburo is murdered by his brother, and Hidetora goes mad with sorrow.

The Colors of Ran Ran is a vivid display of color. The rolling hills of Japan are explosively green; the piercing sunrise of Lady Sue’s prayer is heart-wrenching. The beautiful colors of the three sons, whose names mean first, second and third, allow an audience to follow the their progression into greed and ambition. Kurosawa uses visually identifiable colors with his male characters as well as the women. Visual clues often tell his audience what to feel or think about a certain character though they may refer more to Western cultural codes. Kurosawa was well versed in American Western slang that included, “yellow bellied cowards” and “You yellow or something?” Saburo, the youngest and most loyal son, is frequently identified by the color blue, Taro, the eldest, is dressed in red and Jiro, the middle child, yellow, but after Taro’s death Jiro takes on red as his identifying color. Bonnie Melchior argues that Kurosawa, as a painter and graphic designer, had a greater understanding of color use and color theory than his contemporaries in the film industry: Like the use of camera angles, use of color becomes a means to distance spectators, to make them view Hidetora’s choices and the consequences of those choices from a social and cosmic rather than personal perspective. (43) The scene between Hidetora and Lady Sue is painful, contrasting the beauty of the scene with the implied bloodshed in the conversation. Lady Sue is the opposite of Lady Kaede; she is modest, unquestioning, and peaceful. Lady Sue has surrendered her life to the worship of Buddha and would be happier to shave her head and live as a nun. Hidetora walks up behind Lady Sue who is in prayer and observes her for a moment. The framing is a simple two-shot, comprised of the silhouettes of Lady Sue and Hidetora. The backdrop is an amazing sunrise of purples and orange, with a thin

87 line of red cutting right across the screen. Lady Sue is kneeling at first, however when she stands the cut of red runs directly behind her neck, obviously foreshadowing later events in the film. Although Serper speaks of the invisibility of blood in Ran,the allusion is clearly present in this scene. Earlier in the film, while Hidetora had signed his loyalty to his son in blood, the cut was never actually seen, it was only implied. Yet, Kurosawa never shied from asking his actors to actually cut themselves on screen. Hidetora is dissatisfied with their meeting, as he is looking to deal withthe demons he has created. His son married the only surviving member of a family that Hidetora killed in the name of greed. The castle they lived in was burned to the ground, and while he is unaware that the young man survived he believes the son died after having his eyes gouged out. It is Lady Sue’s inability to hate or seek revenge that unsettles Hidetora most. She forgives him and she is completely unaware that is the worst fate he could suffer. Hidetora and his men move on to the third castle, which is now abandoned by the army of his third son, who has sought refuge on Fujimaki’s lands. Hidetora takes the castle only to wake up the next morning under siege from the joint forces of his two sons. This scene is the most visually rich of the entire movie. Hidetora is surrounded by death. Draped in a white kimono his face moves from a healthy flesh tone to a ghostly pale, his eyes hollow, his face becomes gaunt and his lips white. He watches his men, former soldiers sworn to loyalty, die one by one, picked off by his own sons. Hidetora retreats to a lone tower to seek refuge. He witnesses his wives stab each other in ritual mutual suicide to escape enslavement and rape. His maids and concubines fall on their own knives. Hidetora sits alone in a room becoming crowded with arrows meant to kill him. He stares directly at the camera, as if making contact with the audience. He is not distraught, he is serene. Hidetora is finally aware that this is what he has created, not a kingdom but a destroyed culture with no guidance, loyalty or unity. The emotional impact of this violent scene is profound. Hidetora’s face has grown from that of an older man to a ghost. He appears ghastly pale to match his white robe. The castle he chooses to make his “final stand” in is none other than the deserted castle of his cast-off son Saburo. His two evil sons come to claim his life while the old man finds refuge in his third son. However, much like King Lear, Hidetora finds too late that the one he was quick to rid himself of, was the only one willing to save and shelter him. Hidetora loses his mind and ascends the grand stairs to the tower surrounded by the men of his sons. He is the lone white figure. The soldiers are dressed in black uniform armor, by which Kurosawa chose to make a statement. Usually Japanese soldiers would have multi-colored armor. The soldiers would not have looked so uniform; they would be a field of color unified only by the banners rising from their backs. However, Kurosawa chose a field of black to compare to the now destroyed Hidetora. He descends the staircase walking lopsidedly; he is clearly ruined. He emerges in his white kimono from the black of the tower; the tower is in flames with black smoke billowing down into our shot. The steps are dark gray stone; the tower is dark grey stone and wood, the soldiers are black, the air is turning black.

88 Hidetora then leaves with the Fool and Tango, who reveals himself as a loyal follower. They wander the ruins of a castle burned down long ago. Hidetora encounters his personal demons as he realizes that this castle belonged to his foe who he had killed and whose children he had tortured. Kurosawa makes the visual allegory of “rats in mazes.” There are many aerial shots in this sequence, shooting directly down on Hidetora as he walks through the ruins of the castles. He is contained by the high walls on both sides. Hidetora is trapped into this castle and according to the visuals that Kurosawa provides the audience; he is trapped into his own fate. Hidetora can only walk forward; the sides are barred by the high, unassailable wall, while the back is blocked by the Fool. Perhaps Kurosawa had personal insight into the darker side of human nature, trapped in his own maze. In 1973 Kurosawa had attempted suicide, and while his self- inflicted wounds were not fatal, the effects of this act were with him the rest of his life and appear in his movies through his understanding of psychological devastation.

Weak Men, Manipulating Women Kurosawa’s interpretation of King Lear provides the audience/reader with a deeper understanding of the text. In a traditional reading of the play-text, a reader will assume that Lear falls prey to his own bad choices. However, in Kurosawa’s reading, Lear/ Hidetora is guilty of defying fate and breaking strict codes of honor and personal responsibility. Hidetora willingly castrates himself from his position of power, leaving him impotent and a victim. From a Japanese cultural standpoint, this was a horrible decision, because not only must Hidetora pay for this mistake but everyone else as well. Lady Kaede, whose father was lord of the castle Hidetora now resides in, had watched as Hidetora killed her father, and installed himself into her former home. Possessing a keen intellect, which is an aspect Kurosawa gives his treacherous women, she understands that when her husband becomes ruler that she now has the upper hand over the old king. Kathy Howlett points out that the male/female struggle for domination is very prevalent in Ran. In her essay, “Are You Trying to Make Me Kill Myself? Gender, Identity and Spatial Arrangements in Kurosawa’s Ran,” Howlett quotes Steven Prince, who argues that Ran exhibits the “f negative inversion” of the samurai code. While a normal Samurai tale would glorify Hidetora’s life and career, this Jidai Geki tale inverts that. Hidetora becomes a useless old man once stripped of his power and throne. Ultimately, Hidetora’s degradation comes from a woman, Lady Kaede, a humiliation in the patriarchal culture of medieval Japan that is worse than humiliation by his sons which would have been more honorable: “The presence of Lady Kaeda . . . challenges Hidetora’s samurai identity as Great Lord. She repeatedly challenges Hidetora’s assertion of space and, ultimately, seeks the erasure of the entire Ichimonji family” (363). Jiro, the second son, kills Taro the first son during the battle to kill their father, and then takes possession of the main castle. Taro’s widow, Lady Kaede, wastes no time seducing her husband’s murderer and brother. She makes herself queen and

89 demands that her new husband kill his first wife, Lady Sue, because she couldn’t “live knowing another woman has known your touch.” Jiro, a weak man, is easily guided by his new infatuation and orders his guard to kill Lady Sue. The guard points out the weakness of a man so easily led by a woman. When guard returns with Lady Sue’s head wrapped in salt to present to Lady Kaede, on opening it, she finds she is presented with a paper mache head of a fox—a symbol for both fidelity and supernatural power. The guard then goes into a folk tale of a man led by a fox to his doom; there is another ancient tale of a fox with nine tales that become a beautiful woman by day to seduce a powerful daimyo. This reflects the betrayal of Lady Kaede and how she as woman/fox will lure the daimyo to his death and destroys his entire domain. This Japanese symbolism of a woman as the fox is very different from the Anglo- Saxon perception of sexual prowess. Goneril and Regan are sexual beings, but they are not overtly sexual. There are no sexual tensions between their father and themselves, nor is there a use of sexual power to lead or guide their husbands. However in Ran, Lady Kaede clearly leads her husband around. Her counterpart, Lady Sue, who is a model wife, is devoid of sexuality, almost childlike. More of an Albany-figure, Lady Sue who is married to Hidetora’s second son, Jiro, becomes increasingly attentive to the elderly Hidetora, and never bears him any ill-will, even becoming sympathetic as his family becomes vicious. This is forgiving indeed, towards the man who killed her parents, blinded her brother and stole her inheritance. A small woman, in the film’s visuals Lady Sue dresses less colorfully than the other women in the film and lives as a nun, which implies celibacy. Her husband, Jiro, lives a homo-social life surrounded by other men, warriors, ministers, servants. Jiro spends his time plotting against his brother and then becomes sexually involved with Lady Kaede, his brother’s widow. Kaede is sexually stronger than he, which is why she can rule over him with ease. While neither Goneril nor Regan exactly fit Kaede’s role, she mirrors the older sisters in Lear’s storyline well. Goneril poisons her sister, Regan in jealousy over Edmund. Both sisters are married, yet they compete incessantly for the same man. Lady Kaede resmbles them in this as the widow of Taro who seduces his murderer and brother Jiro. Not being satisfied with merely stealing Lady Sue’s husband, Lady Kaede insists also that Lady Sue be murdered. This is an unusual, but appropriate, re-creation of the two sisters. Lady Sue is not competing with Lady Kaede, and would undoubtedly be overjoyed to hear her husband’s interests have shifted elsewhere. However, Lady Kaede clearly represents the ruthlessness and cruelty exhibited by both sisters, and in her murdering of Lady Sue reflects Goneril’s final poisoning of her sister to win her lover, Edmund. Kurosawa, re-inventing Shakespeare’s play-text for a more modern Japanese audience, reworked the idea. Lady Kaeda is not lusting with jealousy; she is consumed with vengeance upon a family that murdered hers, and on a man that sold her off to his son for a lifetime of rape and degradation. By killing Lady Sue, Lady Kaeda comes one step closer to completely destroying this family, and her ruthlessness is more frightening because it is not personal to Lady Sue. An interesting context in which to view the representation of female characters, particularly Lady Kaeda, is from the post-World War II decline of Japan’s beautiful Geisha culture and tradition. Women

90 who were formerly revered as walking pieces of art were relegated to prostitute within a matter of months. This hurt not only the Geisha community, which looked down on prostitution, but the Japanese ideal of womanhood. Women were no longer viewed as pure and chaste, but as creatures that were purely sexual, with a power that would destroy men. Lady Sue and Kaeda represent this perception perfectly. While Lady Kaeda is the traditional “evil” woman, Lady Sue is the chaste version of the former female tradition. Lady Kaeda seduces her dead husband’s brother (also his killer) to regain power in her castle, once successful she demands the head of her rival, the brother’s true wife, Lady Sue. As a virginal nun; Lady Sue spends her day at prayer begging for the souls of her parents to be admitted into the afterlife by Buddha Amita. Kurosawa was making a statement with portrayal of Lady Kaede. She was an intelligent woman who, much like Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, was endowed with a mind sharper than her husband’s. Kaeda used her ability to seek revenge for her family’s honor and for herself. When Saburo rescues his father from his brother Jiro, a parallel to Cordelia’s rescue of Lear, Saburo and Hidetora share a horse, which is the ultimate sign of Hidetora’s humility and Saburo’s loyalty. Hidetora confesses to his son that he is no longer noble; he has cast off his royal kimono and now only wears his plain white robe. Hidetora does not want to be a leader, only a father. He says that he looks forward to living the rest of his years with Saburo and sits talking with his youngest son. At this very moment, a bullet finds its way to Saburo’s heart. Father and son fall off of the horse and to the ground. Hidetora takes his son’s head into his lap and watches as his only loyal son dies right before him. The parallel between Cordelia and Saburo becomes tragic as both characters face a certain death. However, before this, their similarities are very apparent. After being unable to give their fathers the ego-placating answer they desire Saburo and Cordelia are disowned. Both are courted by the leaders of other nations. For Cordelia, it’s a marriage to the king of France, for Saburo he is bethroed to Fujimaki’s only daughter— more importantly, his only child—and will inherit his portion of Japan. Cordelia leaves England and her father at the hands of her evil sisters and their ill-equipped husbands. Saburo is banished from his home and flees his father’s lands to take shelter with Fujimaki. Most tragically these two characters parallel each other because of their fated and senseless deaths. Cordelia leads a command of French soldiers to rescue her father, not to invade England; Saburo does the same; he has no intention of reclaiming the land that is rightfully his. Cordelia is needlessly executed after being caught and imprisoned; Saburo is shot in the back after rescuing and reuniting with his father, again a needless death. Both characters are content to reclaim their fathers, and return to their new homes, leaving their siblings to govern. It was the greed, lust and vengeance of the siblings that prevented this, and created the tragic end. Hidetora dies after suffering the loss of three sons. The first two sons he lost to greed, and the final one to violence at the hands of the treacherous brothers. Yet initial violence was engendered by Hidetora himself. The two neighboring war lords are now poised to invade his country and enslave the people now there.

91 From Kurosawa to Shakespeare Kurosawa’s cultural translation of Shakespeare re-invented the text for not only a Japanese audience, but an American one as well. Because Kurosawa’s Japanese audience would reject a power struggle between two women, they would condemn a leader in the traditional text of Lear who would leave his kingdom to two women for saying they “loved him.” They would not understand the third daughter as a “warrior” reclaiming her father only to die, so the change of gender was paramount to the success of the Japanese script. While Shakespeare purists might rail against Kurosawa’s dramatic changes, most film critics would argue that these changes were entirely necessary, not only to the success of the film, but to the longevity of the Shakespearean play-text. The fact that Shakespeare’s plays are so very malleable is one of the things that makes them great. In Ran, Kurosawa created a memorable adaptation of King Lear with his own vision and Japanese philosophy encoded into it. Hidetora, like King Lear, was a man in charge of keeping peace of a large and dysfunctional country. Both men had to shed a little blood to do their jobs. It is Kurosawa who asks whether there was a love of bloodshed combined with power that made both men want to pursue their dream of a unified country. Ran is not only memorable Shakespeare but is also a tribute to Kurosawa’s life’s work in cinema, the film that would bring him critical acclaim and lasting fame.

Works Cited Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography REST?? Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Ed edition (May 12, 1983) Braudy, Leo and Morris Dickstein. Great Film Directors: A Critical Anthology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1978. Brode, Douglas. Shakespeare in the Movies: From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. Howlett, Kathy. “Are You Trying to Make Me Commit Suicide? Gender, Identity and Spatial Arrangements in Kurosawa’s Ran.” Literature Film Quarterly; 1996, Volume 24 Issue 4: 360-67 Melchior, Bonnie. “King Lear and Ran: Identity Translated and Transformed.” REST?? East-West Connections , Annual, 2005 Milton Walter Meyer, A Concise History of Japan, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992. Richie, Donald. Films of Akira Kurosawa. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. Watsuji Tetsurô Fûdo (Fûdo ningengakuteki kôsatsu) translated into English as Culture and Climate. Trans. Robert Bownas. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1971. Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Culture. .Duke University Press. PENN 2000

92 Zvika, Serper. “Blood Visibility/Invisibility in Kurosawa’s Ran.” Literature Film Quarterly; 2000, Volume 28 Issue 2, 149-155. Zvika, Serper. “The Bloodied Sacred Pine Tree: A Dialectical Depiction of Death in Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and Ran.” Journal of Film & Video; Summer 2000, Volume 52 Issue 2, 13-28.

Filmography The Bad Sleep Well. (1960), dir. Akira Kurosawa Ran. (1986), dir. Akira Kurosawa Throne of Blood. (1957), dir. Akira Kurosawa

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