Throne of Blood

• 1. Introduction

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  Throne of Blood arrived in Japanese cinemas on the 15th of January 1957, and it asked audiences to watch a man be killed by real arrows. Not props. Not trick photography. Real arrows, shot by skilled archers at Toshiro Mifune, one of the most famous actors in the country. Mifune waved his arms to signal where he was moving, so the archers would not accidentally strike him somewhere lethal. The result is one of the most viscerally unsettling death scenes ever filmed. How did Akira Kurosawa, a director who had spent years putting off this particular project, create something so brutally direct? And why did it take Shakespeare's Macbeth, transplanted from Medieval Scotland to feudal Japan, to bring it to the screen?

• 2. A Long-Delayed Adaptation

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  Kurosawa had admired Macbeth for a long time. After completing Rashomon in 1950, he set his sights on a film version. Then he learned that Orson Welles had already released his own Macbeth adaptation in 1948, and Kurosawa chose to wait. He believed Scotland and Japan in the Middle Ages had shared social problems, and that those problems carried lessons for the present day. He also saw Macbeth as a cautionary tale that could sit alongside his 1952 film Ikiru. The delay gave him time to think. By May 1956, Kurosawa announced to Toho that he would produce three samurai films, one of which was Throne of Blood, originally planned for another director. Ishiro Honda, best known at the time for directing the 1954 Godzilla, was slated to take the helm. When Toho read the script and realized the budget required was substantial, they insisted Kurosawa direct all three films himself.

• 3. Noh on Film

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  William Shakespeare's plays had been read in Japan since the Meiji Restoration in 1868, though they were banned during World War II for not being Japanese. Kurosawa's adaptation drew not just on Shakespeare but on Noh, the ancient Japanese theatrical form he preferred over Kabuki. He incorporated Noh-style body movements and set design, and the evil spirit appears wearing faces reminiscent of Noh masks, beginning with yaseonna, the mask of the old lady. The film score draws its flute and drum directly from Noh tradition. Noh often stresses the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence, and Throne of Blood weaves this into the story: a chorus sings that Washizu's ghost remains in the world, denied salvation. Isuzu Yamada, who played Lady Asaji Washizu, made such stillness and minimal movement central to her performance that Vivien Leigh, who met Kurosawa at a party after the film's London screening, asked Kurosawa specifically why Yamada moved so little when her character was mad.

• 4. Mount Fuji and Volcanic Fog

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  The castle exteriors were built directly on the volcanic slopes of Mount Fuji. Kurosawa chose the location not to showcase the famous mountain but because it offered a stunted landscape and near-constant fog. Volcanic soil was transported from Fuji to Toho's Tamagawa studio so the courtyard ground would match. Forest scenes combined real Fuji woodland with studio shots in Tokyo. Washizu's mansion was filmed on the Izu Peninsula. In Kurosawa's own words, the work nearly exhausted the crew: "We almost got sick." A nearby U.S. Marine Corps base and an MP battalion provided critical labor assistance during the construction. Production designer Yoshiro Muraki chose to saturate the set walls in black and layered armor throughout, designed to work with the mist and fog, and grounded the look in ancient scrolls depicting Japanese castles.

• 5. London, Laurence Olivier, and Dilys Powell

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  Throne of Blood became the first film screened at the 1st BFI London Film Festival, on the 16th of October 1957. After that screening, Kurosawa attended a party at the home of film critic Dilys Powell, where he dined with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. The two actors were, at the time, planning their own film version of Macbeth, with Olivier as Macbeth and Leigh as Lady Macbeth. That project never materialized. Olivier told Kurosawa directly that he had enjoyed the film, singling out the arrow scene featuring Mifune for praise. Leigh's question about Yamada's stillness revealed how differently the two traditions approached the same character. The film would not reach American audiences until November 1957, when Brandon Films distributed it with English subtitles at 105 minutes.

• 6. Critical Reception and Legacy

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  American literary critic Harold Bloom judged Throne of Blood "the most successful film version of Macbeth." Film historian Donald Richie called it "a marvel because it is made of so little: fog, wind, trees, mist." Film critic Stephen Prince compared its stripped-down landscapes to the Japanese painting technique sumi-e. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% approval rating from 47 reviews, with an average score of 8.80 out of 10. The film won two Mainichi Film Awards, including Best Actor for Toshiro Mifune. David Parkinson of Empire magazine gave it five out of five stars. The influence of Throne of Blood extended in unexpected directions: Toshiro Mifune's arrow-death scene directly inspired Piper Laurie's death in the 1976 film Carrie, with knives substituted for arrows. Roman Polanski's 1971 Macbeth adaptation borrowed from Throne of Blood in shots of characters on twisted roads and in its use of music to signal psychological states. In 1985, Kurosawa returned to feudal Japan and to Shakespeare, this time adapting King Lear as Ran.