A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #267: Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Kage­musha.

Kagemusha

This is a very thought-pro­vok­ing film. The sto­ry could have eas­i­ly been turned into farce but for the unbear­able ten­sion that Shin­gen’s dou­ble is forced to shoul­der in main­tain­ing the pre­tense that he actu­al­ly is the ruler, while the real Shin­gen mold­ers at the bot­tom of a lake. The lengths that “his” retain­ers go to uphold the illu­sion of “his” rule becomes a clear tes­ta­ment to the neces­si­ty of sta­ble gov­er­nance, but also sug­gests that it is mis­guid­ed to put that trust in a spe­cif­ic per­son, rather than the posi­tion itself.

Shin­gen is such a strong ruler that that the mere rumor of his death brings a gleam into the eye of his antag­o­nists, and the dash­ing of that rumor puts their tails back between their legs. His wis­dom is such that his last orders pre­serve his realm for 3 years after his death, before his impul­sive and dis­owned son Kat­suy­ori pro­vides the pud­dding-proof that line-of-descent preser­va­tion of a coun­try often pays a hor­ri­ble price. Though the major­i­ty of the film keeps us with the rul­ing class­es, the fact that Shin­gen’s dou­ble is a pet­ty thief saved from cru­ci­fix­ion always keeps the poor com­mon Japan­ese peas­antry “in the room”. The ram­pant slaugh­ter at the end of the film is there­fore much more poignant, and a worse night­mare than any­thing the thief-turned-Shin­gen has dreamed for the last three years of his life.

Though this thief, is, osten­si­bly, the kage­musha, the true shad­ow war­rior is the dead Shin­gen, who was far­sight­ed and clever enough to know how his lega­cy would crum­ble after his death if his prepa­ra­tions and orders were not fol­lowed. A man that comes along once in a cen­tu­ry, but realms are meant to last longer than a sin­gle ruler.

Inci­den­tal­ly, this movie got me itch­ing to play that old 8 bit Nin­ten­do turn-based strat­e­gy and resource-man­age­ment game Shin­gen The Ruler.