Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior)

jac 02/12/02

Released: 1980
Length: 179 minutes [US version 162 minutes]
Producer: Toho/Fox
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa & Masato Ide
Cinematographer: Kazuo Miyagawa
 

Cast:

Shingen Takeda and his double, the Kagemusha..................Tatsuya Nakadai
Nobukado Takeda [Shingen's brother]..............................Tsutomu Yamazaki
Katsuyori Takeda [Shingen's son]........................................ Kenichi Hagiwara
Gyobu Taguchi [cut from the US version].............................Takashi Shimura
Takemaru Takeda [Shingen's grandson]............................................. Kota Yui
Nobunaga Oda [Shingen's enemy]................................................ Daisuke Ryu
IeyasuTokugawa [Shingen's enemy]........................................... Masayuki Yui
Masakage Yamagata [Takeda Clan general, Fire Battalion].......... Shuji Otaki
Sohachiro Tsuchiya [Shingen's bodyguard]................................ Jinpachi Nezu
Oyunokata [Shingen's concubine]........................................... Mitsuko Baisho
Otsuyanokata [Shingen's concubine].......................................... Kaori Momoi

And thousands more…
 

Story:

In Japan's 16th-century warring states period (just before the triumph of Ieyasu Tokugawa), a condemned thief is spared from execution if he agrees to serve as a double for Takeda Shingen, Tokugawa's enemy. Shingen is a powerful military leader, but he dies unexpectedly. Now the thief must play the role full time to save the clan. He begins to imagine that he actually is Shingen, to the consternation of his handlers. But Shingen's horse can tell the difference, and that ultimately reveals the truth.  Kagemusha is thrown out, and the Shingen clan is destroyed.
 

Awards:

Kinema Junpo award in 1980 for Best Supporting Actor (Tsutomu Yamazaki); runner-up for Academy Award for best Foreign-Language Film (lost to Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears); co-winner (with All That Jazz )of the Cannes Grand Prize.
 

Commentary:

Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas helped to secure funding for this film and managed its US release. At $6 million dollars Kagemusha was the most expensive Japanese-produced film that had ever been made, as well as the first distributed by and invested in by a foreign company (Fox). The film was an international hit: In a year when every other big Japanese studio lost money, Kagemusha caused Toho's profits to soar by more than 50 percent.

Kagemusha illustrates the paradox of Kurosawa as a director: He has always been the subject of adulation abroad and his films have made lots of money, yet he never received as much respect in Japan. When he made Kagemusha, it had been six years since he had made a film [Dersa Uzala, produced and shot in the Soviet Union]. In many respects, this film was a practice run for Kurosawa's later internationally successful films, such as Ran.  Kurosawa died in 1998.  For more information about Kurosawa, see:   http://home.earthlink.net/~ronintom/Kurosawa.htm .