Background for watching Kagemusha

I have had a hard time getting “into” Kagemusha and have always considered it lacking or incomplete but a recent experience has changed that. I recently watched the movie Samurai Banners starring Toshiro Mifune and discovered that this movie dovetails very nicely with Kagemusha making watching it a much more satisfying experience. Samurai Banners tells the story of Yammamoto Kansuke. a military advisor to the Takeda clan, serving Takeda Shingen. While the movie is not very good it provides necessary back-story to Kagemusha. I found that the back-story fleshed out the characters who Kurosawa presents but provides little information. In Samurai Banners one sees Takeda Shingen’s conquest of Suruga, his fathering of his son Katsuyori as well as Shingen’s wounding in the shoulder by his for Uesugi at the Battle of Kawanakajima in 1561.

Welcome to akirakurosawa.info, PLecso!

And thanks for the recommendation! I too found Kagemusha lacking something when I first saw it. It took me a number of viewings to start to appreciate it, and one thing that definitely helped me was a better understanding of the historical background.

This also reminds me of the board game Ran, which I reviewed a few years ago. It is a fairly accurate historical simulation and playing it has helped me better understand how battles actually worked at the time.