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Akira Kurosawa, called the most "Western" of Japanese film directors, draws from Western tradition, adapting Dostoevsky and Shakespeare to the screen, or finding parallels in the Japanese samurai for the exploits of the American cowboy. However, the occidental character of his films is always recast in oriental form. One of the most striking examples is Throne of Blood,' Kurosawa's adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth which evolves not in the traditions of Elizabethan theatre but in a purely Japanese context.
Historically Japan has a tradition of isolationism having deliberately cut itself off from commerce with the West from the late sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Its literature, initially influenced by China, became primarily insular after the eighth century, developing its own customs. History and legend came to be freely adapted to conform to Japanese literary mores. Foreign literature underwent the same changes. When Shakespeare was first introduced to Japan in the nineteenth century, Tsubouchi Shoyo, the translator, felt free to later recast the characters of Lady Macbeth and Ophelia into their Japanese counterparts Lady Yodogimi and Kagero in his play Kiri Hitoha. Kurosawa is following this tradition, allowing himself freedom to render Shakespeare not in western terms, but rather in the style of Japanese battle literature and art of the Middle Ages.
Covering the period from 1185 to 1600 A.D., the Middle Ages were centuries of political turmoil. The Heian or classical era which had preceded had been one ot strong centralized court rule and had fomented the development of art and literature, producing such masterpieces as Lady Murasaki's epic novel Genji Monogatari (1010 A.D.). As the court lost touch with the people, feudal barons arose defying and finally destroying the court's ruling families, the Taira or Heike clan. The wars between the Heike and the opposing Genji clans became the basis of epic Japanese literature. Until the late sixteenth century Japan was frequently without a dominant centralized government that could unify the nation, and it is in this feudal era of Japan's history, with its tumult and rivalry between warlords struggling for power, that Kurosawa sets his film, borrowing the literature and art of the period to form its background and style.
Before becoming a director, Kurosawa's early training was in painting. In Throne of Blood...