Kagemusha movie storyline. In Japan’s Sengoku period, Takeda Shingen, daimyo of the Takeda clan, meets with his brother Nobukado, and an unnamed thief whom the latter met by chance and spared from crucifixion due to the thief’s uncanny resemblance to Shingen. The brothers then agree that he would prove useful as a double, and they decide to use the thief as a kagemusha.
Later, Shingen’s army has besieged a castle of Tokugawa Ieyasu. When Shingen visits the battlefield to hear a mysterious nightly flute player, he is shot by a sniper. Mortally wounded, he orders his generals to keep his death a secret for three years. Shingen later dies while being carried over a mountain pass, with only a small group of witnesses. Meanwhile, Shingen’s rivals, Oda Nobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Uesugi Kenshin are each shown contemplating about Shingen’s supposed passing.
Nobukado presents the thief to Shingen’s generals (many of the renowned Twenty-Four Generals of Takeda Shingen), proposing to have this kagemusha impersonate Shingen full-time. At first, even the thief is unaware of Shingen’s death, until he tries to break into a huge jar, believing it to contain treasure, and instead finds Shingen’s preserved corpse. After this act, the generals decide they cannot trust the thief and set him free.
The Takeda leaders secretly dump the jar with Shingen’s corpse into Lake Suwa. Spies working for Tokugawa and his ally Nobunaga Oda witness the disposal of the jar and, suspecting that Shingen has died, go to report the death. The thief, however, overhearing the spies, goes to offer his services, hoping to be of some use to Shingen in death. The Takeda clan preserves the deception by saying they were making an offering of sake to the god of the lake.
Kagemusha (Shadow Warrior?) is a 1980 film by Akira Kurosawa. In Japanese, kagemusha is a term used to denote a political decoy. It is set in the Sengoku period of Japanese history and tells the story of a lower-class criminal who is taught to impersonate a dying daimyo in order to dissuade opposing lords from attacking the newly vulnerable clan. The daimyo is based on Takeda Shingen, and the film ends with the climactic 1575 Battle of Nagashino.
Kagemusha (1980)
Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ken’ichi Hagiwara, Jinpachi Nezu, Hideji Ôtaki, Daisuke Ryû, Masayuki Yui
Screenplay by: Masato Ide, Akira Kurosawa
Cinematography by: Takao Saitô, Shôji Ueda
Costume Design by: Seiichiro Hagakusawa
Art Direction by: Yoshirô Muraki
Music by: Shinichirô Ikebe
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: April 26, 1980
Visits: 112
