Wicked Humans and Weeping Buddhas: (Post)humanism and Hell in Kurosawa’s <span class='italic'>Ran</span>

doi:10.1017/9781108589727.003

Chapter 3 - Wicked Humans and Weeping Buddhas: (Post)humanism and Hell in Kurosawa’s Ran

from Part I - Surviving Lear: Revisiting the Canon

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2019

Melissa Croteau

Edited by

Victoria Bladen ,

Sarah Hatchuel and

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin

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Victoria Bladen: Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Sarah Hatchuel: Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin: Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier

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Summary

Akira Kurosawa spent fifty years, from 1943 to 1993, making films that attempt to look at life and its complexity ‘straight on’, in an unflinching, uncompromising way. However, none of his films forces us to stare into the potential for humans to create hell on earth quite as formidably as one of his final masterpieces, Ran (1985). This chapterfocuseson Kurosawa’s troubled humanism, alongside his didacticism. It is no accident that three such Kurosawa films are his adaptations of Shakespeare tragedies: Throne of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well (1960) and Ran, adaptations of Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear, respectively. Kurosawa uses Ran to express his belief in the compelling need for individuals to transcend the unending cycles of violence that plague this world, rather than embrace the dubious otherworldly salvation provided by supernatural powers, such as Amida Buddha, who appears as a helpless symbol in Ran. The film is a majestic pageant full of symbols and abstractions – including many elements of the Buddhist Noh theatre – which ironically signify unity and harmony in a collapsing world where icons have lost their power to cohere. Ran, in all its beauty and horror, tells us that we have the power to face the inevitable hells on earth and choose not to perpetuate them.

Keywords

Akira Kurosawa King Lear Ran humanism didactism appropriation adaptation Japan

Type: Chapter
Information: Shakespeare on Screen: King Lear , pp. 47 - 62

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108589727.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

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