Kagemusha (影武者; Shadow Warrior) is a 1980 Japanese historical drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa. The story takes place during the Sengoku period of Japanese history and follows a poor thief who is trained to pretend to be the dying daimyō Takeda Shingen. This deception is meant to stop other lords from attacking the weak and vulnerable clan. The term Kagemusha means "shadow warrior" and refers to someone who acts as a political decoy. The film ends with the important 1575 Battle of Nagashino.
Kagemusha was highly praised by critics. It won the Palme d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival, sharing the award with All That Jazz. The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and received other honors. In 2009, it was ranked No. 59 on the list of The Greatest Japanese Films of All Time by the Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo.
Plot
During the Sengoku period, in 1571, Takeda Shingen, the ruler of Kai province from the Takeda clan, meets a thief. This thief had been spared from execution by Shingen’s brother, Nobukado, because the thief looked very similar to Shingen. The brothers decide to use the thief as a kagemusha, a person who acts as a decoy to trick enemies. Later, when the Takeda army attacks a castle owned by Tokugawa Ieyasu, Shingen is injured while listening to a flute player in the enemy camp. He tells his soldiers to retreat and, before dying, orders his generals to keep his death a secret for three years. At the same time, Shingen’s rivals—Oda Nobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Uesugi Kenshin—are confused by the army’s sudden withdrawal and do not know Shingen has died.
Nobukado introduces the thief to Shingen’s generals, suggesting the thief should pretend to be Shingen permanently. At first, the thief does not know Shingen is dead, but later discovers Shingen’s preserved body in a jar, thinking it holds treasure. The generals then decide they cannot trust the thief and let him go. Later, the jar is dropped into Lake Suwa, and spies from the Tokugawa and Oda forces see this. Suspecting Shingen has died, the spies report their observation, but the thief overhears them and returns to the Takeda forces, offering to be a kagemusha again. To keep the deception, the Takeda clan claims they were making an offering of sake to the lake’s god, and the spies are convinced by the thief’s performance.
The kagemusha returns to Shingen’s followers and imitates the late warlord’s movements and learns more about him. When the kagemusha must speak at a clan meeting, he is told by Nobukado to stay quiet until the generals agree on a plan, after which he will simply support their decision and end the meeting. However, Shingen’s son, Katsuyori, is angry about his father’s plan to keep his death secret for three years, which delays Katsuyori’s inheritance and leadership. Katsuyori decides to test the kagemusha in front of the council, as most members still do not know Shingen is dead. Katsuyori directly asks the kagemusha what action to take, but the kagemusha answers in a way that sounds exactly like Shingen, further convincing the generals.
In 1573, Nobunaga gathers his forces to attack Azai Nagamasa, continuing his efforts to control Kyoto against growing opposition. When the Tokugawa and Oda forces attack the Takeda, Katsuyori begins a counterattack despite his generals’ advice. The kagemusha is forced to lead reinforcements in the Battle of Takatenjin and helps inspire the troops to victory. However, later, the kagemusha tries to ride Shingen’s difficult horse and falls off. When others see he does not have Shingen’s battle scars, he is exposed as an impostor and driven out in disgrace, allowing Katsuyori to take control of the clan. Seeing weakness in the Takeda leadership, the Oda and Tokugawa forces launch a full-scale attack on the Takeda homeland.
By 1575, Katsuyori now leads the Takeda army and attacks Nobunaga at Nagashino. Though brave, the Takeda soldiers are defeated when Oda soldiers use firearms from behind wooden walls, killing many Takeda troops. The kagemusha, who followed the army, grabs a spear and charges at the Oda forces but is shot. Dying from his wounds, the kagemusha tries to retrieve the fūrinkazan banner, which had fallen into a river, but is carried away by the current.
Production
George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola are listed as executive producers in the international version of the film. This happened because they helped convince 20th Century-Fox to provide money that was missing from the film’s budget after the original producers, Toho Studios, could not finish the film. In exchange, 20th Century-Fox gained the rights to show the film in other countries. Coppola and Kurosawa appeared together in advertisements for Suntory whisky to help raise money for the production.
Kurosawa first chose the actor Shintaro Katsu to play the main character. However, Katsu left the production before the first day of filming ended. In an interview for the Criterion Collection DVD, Coppola explained that Katsu upset Kurosawa by bringing his own camera crew to record how Kurosawa made movies. It is not clear if Katsu was fired or left on his own, but he was replaced by Tatsuya Nakadai, a well-known actor who had appeared in many of Kurosawa’s earlier films. Nakadai played both the kagemusha and the lord he impersonated.
Kurosawa wrote a role for his longtime actor Takashi Shimura in Kagemusha. This was the last film in which Shimura appeared. However, a scene showing Shimura as a servant who accompanies a Catholic missionary and doctor to a meeting with Shingen was removed from the foreign version of the film. The Criterion Collection DVD version restored this scene, along with about eighteen additional minutes of footage.
According to Lucas, Kurosawa used 5,000 extras for the final battle scene. He filmed for an entire day but reduced it to 90 seconds in the final version. Many special effects and scenes that helped complete the story were removed during editing.
Release
The movie Kagemusha was shown in movie theaters in Japan on April 26, 1980, and was released by Toho. It was shown in movie theaters in the United States on October 6, 1980, and was released by Twentieth Century-Fox. The version shown in U.S. theaters was 162 minutes long. In 2005, the movie was released on home video in the United States with a length of 180 minutes.
Reception
Kagemusha was the most popular Japanese film in 1980, earning ¥2.7 billion from rental income in Japan. It made $8 million in ten days at 217 theaters across the country. The film earned a total of ¥5.5 billion ($26 million) from ticket sales in Japan.
Outside Japan, the film earned $4 million in the United States, which would equal over $14 million in 2021 due to inflation, from 1.5 million tickets sold. In France, where the film was released on October 1, 1980, it sold 904,627 tickets, equal to about €2,442,500 ($3,401,000) in revenue. This means the film earned approximately $33,401,000 worldwide, which would equal about $131,000,000 in 2025.
Kagemusha received an 89% approval rating from 27 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 7.6 out of 10. The site described the film as "epic in scope and full of striking color," calling it Akira Kurosawa's successful return to samurai stories. Metacritic gave the film a score of 84 out of 100 based on 15 critics, showing it was widely praised.
Kagemusha won many awards in Japan and other countries, marking the start of Kurosawa’s most successful decade in international honors, the 1980s. At the 1980 Cannes Film Festival, Kagemusha shared the Palme d’Or with the film All That Jazz. At the 53rd Academy Awards, it was nominated for Best Art Direction (Yoshirō Muraki) and Best Foreign Language Film.
In 2016, The Hollywood Reporter ranked Kagemusha 10th among 69 films that won the Palme d’Or. The article noted that the film, set in 16th-century Japan, remains impressive for its historical details and powerful images that express ideas about reality, belief, and meaning.