The purpose of this study is to examine Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, a great masterpiece inspired by Shakespeare. In his adaptation Kurosawa follows the original more or less faithfully for his main plot, though one of the striking aspects o ...

The purpose of this study is to examine Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, a great masterpiece inspired by Shakespeare. In his adaptation Kurosawa follows the original more or less faithfully for his main plot, though one of the striking aspects of the film is that it is far less dependent on language. In apposition to the cultural intertexts at work in Shakespeare's play, Kurosawa blends the Japanese equivalent of the western-the medieval Samurai film film-with the conventions of Japanese painting(sumi-e composition) and the Noh theatre.
Kurosawa's artistic insistence on the stylized and symbolical concentration of dramatic effects closely relates him to a style in Noh drama, which he regards as the real heart, the core of all Japanese drama. He uses a number of visual polarities between the concreteness of art and the elusiveness of reality, and between motion and stasis to develop the moral issues of the film. Kurosawa choreographs the movements of characters as well as polar forces, attempting a synthesis of cinematic dynamism and the static quality of Noh drama. The masks, makeup, body movement, costume, scenery and symbolic conventions of Noh are fully incorporated in the film.
Unlike Macbeth, at the end of Throne of Blood the universe is devoid of political virtue, without any sense of re-established order so that Kurosawa frustrates our natural desire for closure. The incorporation of the pervasive Noh devices in characterization and in the film's cyclic structure give the action a traditional Buddhist view of existence: the life of man is a turbulent period ruled by passion and endured despite continual fear of death and meaninglessness.
Throne of Blood successfully translates dramatic energy and intensity of Shakespeare's text, and it scrutinizes comparison as a mode of cross-media and cross-cultural criticism. Kurosawa tries to reexamine the specific history and genre conventions of Japanese cinema and to expand the possibility of filmic art. Throne of Blood is not only an unusual example of cultural transmission and dramatic expansion, but a unique film made by a true innovator of cinema.