The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Akira Kurosawa · a film · 1957 · scored on the Japanese release, with the desk’s own English renderings · after Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Mode
Shakespeare’s tragedy refounded without its verse in the grammar of the Noh; period war film and ghost play in one structure
Mythos
The usurper and the prophecy that fulfils itself by being believed; the Fates at the wheel; the web and the fly; the dead lingering in a place, as in the Noh
Phase
One usurpation, from the prophecy in the forest to the arrows, framed by a chorus over the bare site where the castle stood
Presentation
Feature film in black and white, Academy ratio, mono sound, in Japanese; Masaru Sato’s score of flute and drum, Yoshirō Muraki’s castle of dark wood
Register
From the spirit’s toneless chant to Washizu’s shouting; fog, deep black and stillness, broken by horses, birds and arrows
Scale
Two generals, one castle, and a circle of lords killed by the men beneath them
Governing Proposition
Two generals lost in a forest hear a spirit foretell their rise; one of them, moved by his wife’s argument from fear, kills his lord and then his friend, and is killed by his own archers when the forest comes to the castle. The wager of the film is that Macbeth can be carried without a line of its verse, by image, sound and the grammar of the Noh, and that what it gives up in the usurper’s inner life it can repay as a world: one in which every lord sits where a murdered lord sat, and the whole story is a ghost’s recurrence sung over a ruin.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film begins in mist over a bare site. A chorus sings of the vanity of ambition, and a marker post stands where a castle stood. Then the film goes back to the castle as it was, Spider’s Web Castle in its power, and the story is told as if out of the ground of the place. At the end the castle is gone again: the same chorus is sung, and the same post stands in the same mist. Everything between is held inside that return, and the story it holds has the shape of a ghost’s, a dead man’s ruin played again where it happened.
Between the two choruses the film keeps the order of the play and strips it. Messengers ride into the courtyard one after another, each reporting a turn of a rebellion to the lord of the castle and his council. Two generals, Washizu and Miki, are lost in the forest and meet a spirit who foretells their rise, and the first promotion follows. Washizu’s wife, Asaji, persuades him; the lord visits and is murdered; his heir flees; Washizu is made lord. Miki is murdered, and his ghost sits at the banquet. Asaji’s child is born dead. Then a second prophecy, birds driven into the hall, Asaji’s madness, the forest coming through the mist, and Washizu killed by his own archers.
Akira Kurosawa directed it for Toho from a screenplay by Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryūzō Kikushima, Hideo Oguni and himself, after Macbeth; Shakespeare is not credited as a writer, but the source is plain and acknowledged. It was released in Japan in January 1957: black and white, in the Academy frame, with mono sound, in Japanese. Asakazu Nakai photographed it, Yoshirō Muraki was its art director, and Masaru Sato wrote the score. Toshirō Mifune plays Washizu, Isuzu Yamada plays Asaji, Minoru Chiaki plays Miki, and Takashi Shimura plays Noriyasu. The Japanese title, Kumonosu-jō, means “Spider’s Web Castle”.
Movement II
Washizu and Miki ride into the forest and are lost in it. The forest is a labyrinth, and the castle is named for it. They ride in circles through the fog, passing the same point again and again; the world is subtracted from the frame, and two men on horses go round in a web. The repetition is the meaning, and it is held long, past the moment at which the meaning has landed.
In a hut of reeds they find a spirit at a spinning wheel. It is seen through the reeds, turning the wheel and chanting in a thin, toneless voice, and it tells them how they will rise. Then it is gone, and where it sat there is a heap of bones. One spirit stands where the play has three witches, and the figure at the wheel is the Fates spinning a thread. The first promotion follows, and the prophecy begins to fulfil itself by being believed.
What the film removes from the play is the verse entire: no soliloquy, no Porter, no English scenes, and none of Macduff’s line, with its prophecy of a man not born of woman. What it keeps is the shape of the action, and it adds what the play does not have: the web. The forest called the Spider’s Web, the castle that takes its name, the riding in circles, the turning wheel, and at the end the chorus at the same post. Washizu is the fly, and the structure is the trap. An open tragedy has been made a closed one.
Movement III
Asaji sits almost without moving. Isuzu Yamada plays her with a face like a mask, a gliding walk and a stillness in which every turn of the head is a decision, and the Noh is in her as it is in the flute and drums of the score. Her argument is made not to her husband’s desire but to his fear. If Miki tells the lord of the prophecy, the lord will kill Washizu first. And the lord, she reminds him, took the castle by killing his own master.
That argument is the truth the film opens plainly. Usurpation is preemption: in a world of mutual suspicion loyalty is a calculation, and every lord sits where a murdered lord sat. The play’s usurper watches himself become a murderer and says so. Washizu says nothing of the kind; his inner life is withdrawn by design, and he is shown driven rather than known. What the film puts in the place of that self-knowledge is a world, and what it shows of the world is true.
The lord comes to the castle on a visit and is killed. The murder is carried by Asaji. She leaves the room into the dark, and the only sound is her silk on the floor; she comes back out of black with the drugged sake. The deep blacks hold the scene, and the sound is exact. Her stillness against Washizu’s thrashing is the film’s whole account of the marriage: will without motion against motion without will. The heir flees, and Washizu is made lord.
Movement IV
Washizu holds the castle, and the logic Asaji gave him turns on Miki, who heard the prophecy too. Miki is murdered. At the banquet his ghost sits in his place, white and still. Mifune plays the terror at a pitch that tips into grimace and shouting, and the scene stands on the contrast between his openness and the stillness around him: the ghost’s, and Asaji’s.
Asaji is with child, and the child is the promised succession. It is born dead. The line for which the murders were done ends before it begins. A second prophecy follows, and it ties Washizu’s safety to the forest itself. In this film a prophecy fulfils itself by being believed, and Washizu believes it.
The supernatural and the military obey one law. The spirit’s prophecies and the messengers’ reports both arrive from outside the frame, and both are believed. The council scenes are frontal and the compositions horizontal, and power is what arrives from beyond the edge of the picture: news of violence received at a distance, a voice in the fog. Fate is weather, and the weather is fog.
Movement V
A flock of birds is blown into the hall. Asaji, mad, washes hands that are clean; it is the play’s scene, played well, and the stillness that moved Washizu has broken. Then the forest moves. It comes through the mist toward the castle, a prophecy fulfilled and an army camouflaged in cut branches, and the film gives it no second explanation.
Washizu is not killed by an avenger. His own archers turn on him. The arrows strike the wooden walls around him in volleys until one goes through his neck. The man who killed his lord, as that lord had killed his master, is killed by the men beneath him, and the circle closes on itself.
The mist returns, the chorus is sung again, and the post stands on the bare site where the castle was. The film has been a fixed text in the study of Shakespeare on screen for decades, and its questions stay open: whether a Macbeth without interiority is Macbeth or a refutation of it, whether Asaji is its true centre, whether the prophecy causes anything or only names what the world already intends. What it shows is not open. Every lord sits where a murdered lord sat, and the web holds whoever climbs into it.
Act III · The Twelve
The adaptation is a work of subtraction. The Porter, the soliloquies and the whole line of Macduff are gone, and most of what is left is required: from the lord’s visit to the banquet the film is as compressed as any on this desk, each scene turning the next. The test bites twice, and in a film so stripped the excess shows. The messengers who gallop into the courtyard one after another, each reporting a turn of the rebellion to a seated council, run past what they have to tell; the point, that power here is news of violence received at a distance, is made by the third. And the ride in circles through the fog is the meaning, a man going round in a web, held at a length that passes from necessity into demonstration.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Disclosure through image and sound is credited in full, and the film opens one truth plainly. Asaji appeals not to her husband’s desire but to his fear: if Miki tells the lord of the prophecy, the lord will kill Washizu first; and the lord, she reminds him, took the castle by killing his own master. Usurpation is shown as preemption, loyalty as a calculation, every lord seated where a murdered lord sat. That is a social condition, stated and true. Two things hold the axis well down. The play’s deepest disclosure, the self-knowledge of a man watching himself become a murderer, is withdrawn by design, so Washizu is shown driven rather than known; and the frame’s meaning, the vanity of ambition sung over a ruin, is a received truth given force, not uncovered.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Elevation is dreadful and frequent. The spirit seen through the reeds of its hut at a spinning wheel, chanting in a thin, toneless voice, then gone, leaving a heap of bones; the long ride in fog; Asaji leaving the room in the dark during the murder, the only sound her silk on the floor, then returning out of black with the drugged sake; Miki’s ghost, white and still in his place at the banquet; the birds blown into the hall; the forest moving through mist; the arrows. The film rises at least seven times. What holds it: every rise is of one temperature, with no height of beauty or pity to answer the dread; Asaji’s madness is the play’s scene played well rather than surpassed; and two of the heights, the banquet and the arrows, are coarsened by grimace and shouting.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The myth is built, and built twice. From the play come the usurper, the prophecy that fulfils itself by being believed, and the forest that walks. From the Noh comes the frame: a bare site, a chorus, a story told as the lingering of the dead in a place, the shape of a dream play in which a ghost reenacts its ruin. The spirit at its wheel is the Fates spinning a thread. And the film adds what the play lacks: the web. The forest is a labyrinth called the Spider’s Web, the castle takes its name, the riding goes in circles, the wheel turns, the chorus returns to the same post. Held below the higher figures by the particular: Washizu, shown driven rather than known, is the fly in the web more than a man, and the archetype carries him.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The departure is large on two fronts. From Shakespeare on film: Olivier filmed the verse, and Welles’s Macbeth (1948) kept it in a stylized setting; this film throws the verse away and refounds the play in another theatre’s grammar. From the period film: the Noh enters, in Asaji’s mask-like face, her gliding walk and her stillness, in the flute and drums of the score, in frontal staging and empty space, set against Mifune’s open violence. What holds it below the bar is the stake. Macbeth had already been moved out of its world (Joe Macbeth, 1955), stylized period cinema had been Kurosawa’s proven ground since Rashomon, and Toho’s period film supplied much of the costume and battle grammar. The turn is decisive; the wager was smaller than the film’s strangeness suggests.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Substitute a naturalistic form, or keep the verse, and the film loses what it knows. Its knowledge is that the story is a recurrence: a ghost’s tale on a ruin, a man riding in circles, a wheel, a lord who kills as his lord killed, a chorus returning. The frame and the circles carry that, and nothing else in the film states it. The Noh form carries a second knowledge: Asaji’s stillness against Washizu’s thrashing is the film’s whole account of the marriage, will without motion against motion without will, a fact of staging rather than of dialogue. What holds it: the battle and siege passages are in the common grammar of the period film and would survive in another form unchanged, and the messengers are a convention of the stage carried over rather than remade.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Sixty-nine years of return, in film criticism and above all in the study of Shakespeare on screen, where the film is a fixed text; and the questions have not closed: whether a Macbeth without interiority is Macbeth or a refutation of it; how far the Noh governs the film, and whether Asaji is its true centre; whether the prophecy causes anything or only names what the world already intends. Asaji yields most on return, her reasoning lucid and her motive withheld. What holds it: the film is lucid by design, and its readings converge more than they divide once the cycle and the frame are seen; much of the return is to its surface, the fog, the arrows, the spirit, and to the comparison with the play, a well the film draws on rather than one it digs. The evidence is steady, not vast.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Released in 1957, so force and reach are scored together, in the cinema of the 1950s. The force: a reorganisation of what a film of Shakespeare could be, the play carried wholly by image, sound and an alien theatrical grammar, and a fusion of the Noh with the moving image that made stylization a resource of the period film, not an ornament. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the film is a fixed text in the study of Shakespeare on screen, its death by arrows is among the most cited deaths in the cinema, and Kurosawa returned to transposed Shakespeare in Ran (1985). The reach is narrow in direction: it redirected Shakespeare adaptation more than the cinema at large, how far later transpositions into other cultures derive from it is not settled, and in its decade it stands behind the director’s own Rashomon and Seven Samurai in what it changed.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Survival is weighed on form, then presence, then fabric. The form survives complete, in one version, and restorations are repair. The presence is sixty-nine years of continuous exhibition, in repertory and on home video, and constant use in the teaching of Shakespeare and of Japanese cinema: wide, but narrower than that of Seven Samurai or Rashomon, and not the widest of its span. The surface is a war-torn medieval Japan fixed to no fashion of 1957; the stylization that was strange then is strange now in the same way, which is a kind of survival. The fabric, the photography of fog and black and the mono track, is of its period, the smallest charge. Presence wide but not widest sets it at the foot of the step for its age.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Command of the medium. Asakazu Nakai photographs fog so that the world is subtracted from the frame and the castle and its gate rise out of nothing; the deep blacks of the murder carry Asaji’s exit and return. Yoshirō Muraki’s castle is dark wood, low ceilings and a great gate, a space that encloses. Masaru Sato’s score is spare flute and drum, silence is used as an instrument, and the sound is exact: the silk, the horses, the birds, the arrows. Isuzu Yamada’s performance is the finest making, nearly motionless, every turn of the head a decision. The costs recur and hold the figure: Toshirō Mifune plays fear at a pitch that coarsens into grimace and shouting at the banquet and in the last sequence, the fog rides and the messengers are held a beat long, and the spirit’s makeup reads as makeup in close view.
Score: 8.6 / 10
One physics governs: fate is weather, and the weather is fog. Take the two most distant elements, Yamada’s stillness in the manner of the Noh and Mifune’s naturalistic violence. They could have split the film, and they do not, because the law is that the still will moves the thrashing body, and each scene keeps to it. The supernatural and the military obey the same law: the spirit’s prophecy and the messengers’ reports both arrive from outside the frame and are believed, and the forest that walks is at once a prophecy fulfilled and a camouflage of cut branches, given no second explanation. What holds it is the rubric’s own caution, that narrowness is not coherence: no comedy, no common life, no country beyond the forest and the castle, so the law has less to hold together than in a film of wider compass.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Judged on what a film of under two hours in one register holds. The state, as a feudal order of loyalty and murder; war; the marriage, and the family through the lost child and the promised succession; the sacred, in the spirit and a Buddhist frame of vanity sung over the ruin; nature, as forest, fog, horses and birds, each an agent of the plot; history, the age of warring states in which lords rise by killing lords. They are integrated, not listed: the forest is at once nature, prophecy and the army that kills him. What holds the axis lowest: consciousness, the order the play holds above all others, is withdrawn and shown only as behaviour; labour and common life are absent but for soldiers and servants; and the society beyond the castle and its garrisons is not seen.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.3 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.8, then The Archetypal Deep and The Made at 8.6. Sixty-nine years of survival in one complete version, on a surface fixed to no fashion of its year; a myth built twice, from the play and from the Noh, with the web added as the film’s own; and a making of fog, black, silence and exact sound, with Yamada’s stillness at its centre.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.5: the state, war, the marriage, the sacred, nature and history are held and integrated, but consciousness is withdrawn and shown only as behaviour, labour and common life are absent, and the society beyond the castle is not seen. Next above it, The Unconcealment at 8.1, a true disclosure of usurpation as preemption that gives up the usurper’s self-knowledge and frames itself in a received truth; then The Bottomless Well and Pressure on Tradition at 8.2, a film lucid by design whose readings converge, and a reach real in Shakespeare adaptation and narrow in the cinema at large.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.3 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.5, The Made at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.8 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Swerve at 8.4, Pressure on Tradition at 8.2 and The Unconcealment at 8.1 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.1, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.5. The work is held below the summit by three conditions of the Epochal Gate, The Swerve at 8.4, Pressure on Tradition at 8.2 and The Unconcealment at 8.1 against the 8.5 it requires, and by its aggregate, 8.3 against the 9.0 that Tier V requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Kumonosu-jō (蜘蛛巣城) as released in Japan by Toho in January 1957, black and white, in the Academy frame, with mono sound, from the chorus over the bare site to its return: directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay by Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryūzō Kikushima, Hideo Oguni and Kurosawa after Shakespeare’s Macbeth, photographed by Asakazu Nakai, with art direction by Yoshirō Muraki and music by Masaru Sato. The object is the film as released in Japan; export prints and restorations differ in subtitling and condition, not in content. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted. Every axis is judged on the Japanese film. The English renderings are the desk’s own, used for sense, a reader’s aid rather than the object; no subtitled version is judged, and nothing here is charged to one. No line of the dialogue is held to the word with certainty, so none is quoted, and the speech is described. Shakespeare’s play is not part of the work and enters only where the adaptation’s departures are weighed. Figures and particulars that could not be verified are not given: among them the running time, which listings give variously, the shot count and the share of the film given to dialogue, the names of the forts and the history of the rooms within them, the place of the spirit in the Noh repertory, the film’s rank among Shakespeare films in critical opinion, and the much repeated account of how the arrows of the last sequence were shot.