Music in Akira Kurosawa’s Filmic Adaptations of Shakespeare

Abstract

This chapter explores how music is used in Akira Kurosawa’s three Shakespeare films in order to explore problems of Japanese modernity. Working with composers Masaru Sato and Toru Takemitsu, Kurosawa created films that are widely regarded as among the most successful and also the most radically new filmic adaptations of Shakespeare. Throne of Blood (1957), with a score by Sato, is Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth. Set in fifteenth-century Japan, it uses Shakespeare’s plot to depict the treachery, lawlessness, and violent power struggles that occurred between rival clans embroiled in civil war. Music is an essential component as Kurosawa projects the Shakespearean drama of murder, madness, insanity, and tragedy into a spirit world inspired by Nō drama. The Bad Sleep Well (1960), a dark satire based on Hamlet, is Kurosawa’s rebuke of modern Japanese corporate corruption. The film borrows conventions of the Japanese medieval drama, reconfiguring the Samurai warrior as an urban businessman. This study explores musical irony in Sato’s score, showing how styles of Western and traditional Japanese music are deployed to highlight binary oppositions and ironic reversals in Kurosawa’s radical reimagining of his source text. Kurosawa’s historical epic, Ran (1985), is a transcendental lament based on King Lear. The epic scale of image and sound expresses the technological and social amplification of violence deeply rooted in humanity. Takemitsu’s score includes solo flute music derived from Nō, Mahler-like scoring composed at Kurosawa’s request, and the strategic use of silence as a narrative tool.