Akira Kurosawa's Film Throne Of Blood

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Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 film Throne of Blood, also known as Spider Web Castle, is one of the most iconic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the 20th century. Set to the historical backdrop of Medieval Japan during the conflict-filled Sengoku period, the film is most noted for its incorporation of stylistic elements of lighting, dialogue, and symbolic gestures from traditional Japanese Noh theatre. Kurosawa also significantly streamlined the story: shortening the dialogue, simplifying Shakespeare’s elaborate language, and removing minor characters and subplots, such as Hecate, the leader of the witches, and the murder of Macduff’s family. One other notable alteration is the significant expansion of the simplistic staging directions in Shakespeare’s …show more content…
Like Shakespeare, Kurosawa refers to geographical locations only vaguely; for example, the Kurosawa denotes the different locations of the story as, for example, the “North Castle”, the “First fort”, and the “Second fort”. While the numbering of the forts denotes an ascending sense of political importance, unlike Shakespeare’s “Dunsinane Hill” and “Inverness”, the audience of Throne of Blood is not provided with any other frame of references for distance, location, or historical connection. More so than Shakespeare, Kurosawa places little importance on political geography. Despite the distinctive reference to Japan’s Sengoku period through the setting, characters and costume design, the Spider Web Castle is not based on any historical location, nor the characters references to historical figures. Instead, Kurosawa focuses on the symbolic values of tone, meaning, and sensory representation of geographical settings of the story – the sinister nature of the Spider Web Forest, the violence and immorality embodied by the irremovable bloodstains, the unsettling invasion of the supernatural into the human world. In this way, like Shakespeare, Kurosawa vaguely defined political settings of the story and maintains the adaptability of his story - his play can be adapted by various cultural and political contexts, into of any historical or fictional periods characterized by a violence, instability, and the appearance of the
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