ABSTRACT
Filmmaking legend Akira Kurosawa, who lived through the cataclysms of twentieth-century Japan, made several dark films that attempt to look at life in an unflinching, uncompromising way. However, none of his films forces us to stare into the human potential for creating hell on earth quite as formidably as one of his final masterpieces, Ran (1985). This chapter examines Kurosawa’s troubled humanism, alongside his didacticism, in two of his darkest films, Throne of Blood (1957) and Ran, exploring how he uses formalist cinematic style and Buddhist and Shinto religious symbolism. In both films, Kurosawa vividly employs elements of Nō theater to mark the irruption of the spiritual into the phenomenal world, constructing hierophanic moments that lead to downward transcendence. However, while the earlier film contains humanity’s evil in layers of sacred space, Ran portrays a world wherein wickedness has broken out of its bounds and hell is everywhere. In this film, Kurosawa expresses 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 in Ran as an impotent symbol. These two films are cautionary tales for a vicious world.
