“Ran”: The Dangerous Women of Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa started making films in Japan during World War II. I’ve seen one of his most charming early efforts, The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail, a period piece based on ancient Kabuki and Noh plays about some roguish samurai who disguise themselves as monks. Made in 1945 (but not released until 1952), it features Kurosawa’s signature blending of high and low-class characters.

 Another jidaigeki (or “period drama”), one that brought Kurosawa international fame, was Rashomon, a 1950 adaptation of stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Starring such Kurosawa regulars as Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, and Takashi Shimura, it deals with the mysterious death of a samurai in a woodland setting. Three versions of what happened are brought forward:  one tale is told by the samurai’s wife, a second by the bandit who accosted the pair, a third by the dead samurai from beyond the grave, speaking through a medium. In each version, the teller comes off very well indeed. Finally, a woodcutter who has spied on the entire incident gives his own account, in which the three principals are all self-serving and comically inept.

  One of the delightful elements of Rashomon is its handling of the lady who is the samurai’s wife. In her own telling of the story, she is both modest and noble, heroically defending her virtue against the marauding bandit. But other versions reveal her to be quite different: lascivious and something of a shrew. Traditional Japanese culture so often portrays females as paragons of virtue, or as long-suffering Madame Butterflies. But Kurosawa, to his credit, acknowledges that women are not so easily categorized.

 Certainly, this is the case in Kurosawa’s 1957 Throne of Blood, his feudal Japanese retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The dangerously ambitious Lady Macbeth, here called Lady Asaji Washizu, is truly a horror.  Of course this portrayal follows the lead of the sixteenth-century English playwright who first invented her. But in his late-in-life 1985 masterwork, Ran, Kurosawa adds to the familiar story of King Lear an additional element that shows a woman in a very harsh, though highly dramatic, light.

 King Lear, needless to say, begins with an ageing monarch retreating from public life by offering his kingdom to his three daughters. He wrongly assumes they will continue to honor him in his old age, only to find that the two he has favored have no use for him now that he lacks power. Ran, tells a similar story about a fictional warlord named Hidetora Ichimonji, who chooses to leave his kingdom to his three sons. As in  King Lear, the two eldest turn on him; only the third son—the honest one he has rejected—comes through in his moment of need. Because this is a jidaigeki, there is much brutal jostling for power, featuring what looks to be a cast of thousands. But there is also a subplot that is nowhere to be found in Shakespeare.

 Lady Kaede, the wife of the oldest son, has much reason to hate her father-in-law, who once destroyed her entire family in order to claim their castle for himself. When first seen, she’s protesting that she feels no anger; as a Buddhist she understands that none of us can avoid the whims of fate. But after her husband’s death in battle, the grieving widow shows up in his brother’s quarters: and suddenly her meekness explodes into wrath. Brandishing a very sharp knife, she first threatens to slice his throat . . . and then the scene becomes an erotic tryst. This is her form of revenge, and it leads to retribution that is hardly pretty.