Akira Kurosawa’s (1910-1998)

THE THRONE OF BLOOD

(Kumonosu jô, 1957)

Screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni, based on Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Starring

Toshirô Mifune .... Taketori Washizu (Macbeth)

Isuzu Yamada .... Lady Asaji Washizu (Lady Macbeth)

Takashi Shimura .... Noriyasu Odagura (Macduff)

Akira Kubo .... Yoshiteru Miki (Prince , son of King Duncan)

Hiroshi Tachikawa .... Kunimaru Tsuzuki (as Yoichi Tachikawa)

Minoru Chiaki .... Yoshiaki Miki

Takamaru Sasaki .... Kuniharu Tsuzuki

Kokuten Kodo .... Military Commander

Kichijiro Ueda .... Washizu's workman

Eiko Miyoshi .... Old Woman at castle

Chieko Naniwa .... Old Ghost Woman (she stands in for all three of Shakespeare's witches)

Nakajiro Tomita .... Second Military Commander

Yu Fujiki .... Washizu samurai

Sachio Sakai .... Washizu samurai

Shin Otomo .... Washizu samurai

Yoshio Tsuchiya .... Washizu samurai

Senkichi Omura .... Washizu samurai

Yoshio Inaba .... Third Military Commander

Takeo Obugawa .... Miki party member

Akira Tani .... Washizu soldier

Ikio Sawamura .... Washizu soldier

Yutaka Sada .... Washizu samurai

Seijiro Onda .... Second Miki party member

Shinpei Takagi .... Commander

Masao Masuda .... Commander

Akifumi Inoue .... Servant

Kyoro Sakurai .... Servant

Kaneyuki Tsubono .... Servant

Takeshi Katô .... Guard killed by Washizu

Hitoshi Takagi .... Tsuzuki guard (as Kin Takagi)

Higuchi .... Tsuki guard

Shiro Tsuchiya .... Commander

Takaeo Matsushita .... Commander

Jun Otomo .... Commander

Fuminori Ohashi .... Samurai

Seiji Miyaguchi .... Phantom samurai

Nobuo Nakamura .... Phantom samurai

Gen Shimizu

Isao (aka Ko) Kimura .... Phantom samurai

Music by Masaru Satô

Cinematography by Asakazu Nakai

Produced for Toho-Kurosawa Productions by Akira Kurosawa and Sojiro Motoki. Released by Toho Productions Ltd.

Akira Kurosawa [1910-1998] was Japan's most highly regarded film director. His nickname on the set was "tenno," or emperor, and he is also known as "the sensei of cinema." He coauthored virtually all his own films, and produced a large number of highly literate screenplays filmed by other directors. Some of his most popular screenplays have been filmed multiple times, and several of his films have been remade in English, particularly The Outrage, The Magnificent Seven, A Fist Full of Dollars, and Star Wars.

The Cast

Toshiro Mifune [1920-1997] (Macbeth) starred in many of Kurosawa's films, including Drunken Angel (1948) as a gangster, The Quiet Duel (1949) as Takashi Shimura's son, Stray Dog (1949) as the police officer who loses his gun, the bandit in Rashomon (1950), a romantic artist in Scandal (1950), Seven Samurai (1954) as a farmer who impersonates a samurai, Record of a Living Being (I Live in Fear) (1955) as a man motivated by fear of nuclear war, The Throne of Blood (1957) as the Macbeth character, The Lower Depths (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958) as the samurai general which inspired Han Solo in Star Wars, The Bad Sleep Well (1960) as the hero, Yojimbo (1961), and its sequel Sanjuro (1962) as the character inspiring Clint Eastwood's man with no name in a series of Westerns, High and Low (1963), and Red Beard (1965).  An international star, he has been in many English-language films, including Storm over the Pacific (1960), Retreat from Kiska (1964), Grand Prix (1967), Midway (1976) as Admiral Yamamoto, and 1941 (1980).  He normally played vigorous, morally-driven heroes, but could also play complex villains, as in The Throne of Blood.  By the late fifties he had largely supplanted the older Takashi Shimura as the performer on which Kurosawa most depended.  Mifune and Kurosowa fell out during the excruciating two-year long production of Red Beard, where Mifune played the wise elder doctor role, a type often depicted by Takashi Shimura in the early fifties.  Kurosawa and Mifune never spoke again.  The great director also fired composer Masaro Sato after this film. Kurosawa retired from filmmaking after Red Beard and attempted suicide, but recovered and made two of his finest and most spectacular films without Mifune, Kagemusha (1980) and the Shakespearean Ran (1985), based on King Lear, as well as the more intimate Dreams (1990) and Rhapsody in August (1991) with Richard Gere.  Kagemusha in particular proved to be nearly as troublesome for Kurosawa as Red Beard.  Though production was not unduly extended, the director was forced to replace his lead performer with Tatsuya Nakadai on the first day of shooting.

Takashi Shimura [1905-1982] (Macduff), one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century, starred in Kurosawa's The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945) (remade first by Kurosawa as The Hidden Fortress, and later by George Lucas as Star Wars), Those Who Make Tomorrow (1946), No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), Drunken Angel (1948) as a doctor who tries to reform yakuza Toshiro Mifune, The Quiet Duel (1949), Stray Dog (1949) as Mifune's boss, Rashomon (1950) as the woodcutter, Scandal (1950) as Mifune's lawyer, The Idiot (1951) from the novel by Fyodor Dosoevsky, Ikiru (1952), his lifetime performance, as the bureaucrat dying of stomach cancer, Seven Samurai (1954) as the head samurai, Record of a Living Being (1955), The Throne of Blood (1957) as the character corresponding to Macduff, The Hidden Fortress (1958), The Bad Sleep Well (1960) as the second villain, Yojimbo (1961), Sanjuro (1962), High and Low (1963), Red Beard (1965), and finally, in Kagemusha (1980).  A Toho contract actor, Rashomon was one of his few films for another studio and he notably starred as Dr Yamane the paleontologist in Godzilla (1954) and Godzilla's Counterattack (1955), as well as appearing in The Mysterians (Earth Defense Forces) (1957), Mothra (1961), Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster (1964), and most kaiju eigan films until his death.  He also had a small role as a priest in Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1964), based on short stories by Lafcadio Hearn.  Shimura’s characters are generally the moral center of the Kurosawan universe, often providing guidance to the less experienced character played by Mifune.  After 1957, when Shimura played a supporting role in The Throne of Blood, a retelling of Macbeth, his parts became increasingly brief but continued to be highly memorable.