The other day, I showed my partner a trailer for Ran, Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 masterpiece. I was about to go see it at Film Forum with a friend, and wanted to give her some context. I was looking for the trailer that’s been playing at FF the past week, which emphasizes its moodiness and its score. Depending on the trailer you find, you’ll come away with widely varying impressions of Ran. The one I found on YouTube pushed it as an action film, which I think is disingenuous. There certainly is action, and scores of extras running around battlefields, but Ran is actively disinterested in action as uncomplicated spectacle. Better to foreground the moodiness.
As soon as Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada) popped up on screen, both at Film Forum and at home, I had the same response: “She’s crazy.” I’ve carried that idea of her around with me for nearly twenty years now, since I first watched Ran in my bedroom during a college break. Conniving, vengeful, screeching demands left and right, she was one of the great Manipulative Woman. She left a strong impression, but not necessarily a distinctive one. Lady Kaede sat comfortably in league with thousands of other Lady Kaedes; Lady Macbeth, Scarlett O’Hara, Miss Piggy. We all know the type. Lady Kaede existed in my mind as the ultimate expression of a particular cliché.
She certainly enters haughtily. We first see her as she and her retinue moves her possessions into the First Castle. Her husband, Tora Ichimonji, has just been handed control over the Ichimonji clan and its lands by his father, the retiring warlord Takatora Ichimonji, and the First Castle is to be their keep. When she learns that the path is blocked by members of Takatora’s retinue going about their daily routine, she scoffs. “Scandalous. I am the Lady of this castle, they must make way.”
It doesn’t take long for her to start needling her husband, cajoling him for allowing his father to maintain even symbolic power, for allowing his father to take the family banner from the room that should be the seat of the clan’s authority. She convinces Taro to banish his father, and to execute anyone who assists him. She fits firmly into the Lady Macbeth model, sewing chaos to gain power.
But then we learn that First Castle used to be the center of her family’s domain, before Takatora it over and killed her father and brothers. “Right there,” she says while seated next to her husband in the throne room, “I watched my mother take her own life.” In the subtitles, “Right there” is separate from the rest of the sentence, followed by a pause and a curt breath as she relives the experience. In the Japanese, she doesn’t begin the sentence with, “Right there.” She says, “My mother.”
In that moment, we begin to understand the role of women within the world of Ran, and Sengoku period Japan more broadly. They are pawns, married off to secure alliances or curry favor. Lady Kaede watched her family die, and was married to the eldest son of the man who did it. She had no say in the matter. She could only accept. It stands to reason that she would be sensitive to any challenge to her position; her position is all she has, and she has much a sense of how precarious it is as anyone. Even more so when returning to the castle in which she grew up.
The idea of women within Ran as object rather than subject is reinforced a few scenes later when we meet Lady Sué, wife of middle son Jiro. She too is the daughter of an extinguished line, but she serves as a contrast to Lady Kaede. When she greets Takatora with a broad smile and gentle tones, he asks her if she hates him. She says no, again with a beatific smile, and he tells her to stop. “I killed your family. It would be easier for you to hate me.” She doesn’t, or at least she claims not to. Lady Sué is now a dedicated Buddhist, and finds comfort in his teachings.
Lady Kaede has no such comforts. When Taro is killed, she wastes no time getting Jiro into bed. The scene in which she seduces him is one of the best in the film, an electrifying high-wire act of threats and desperation. She twice lightly cuts the man’s throat with a knife, and moments later they’re doing it. She’s canny, you gotta give her that. An unerring instinct for self-preservation. While it would be both appropriate and easy for her to become one of Jiro’s concubines, she has no interest. She insists on becoming his wife, and on the death of Lady Sué.
Jiro first orders his advisor Kurogane to carry out the execution, but he refuses. He believes that Lady Kaede is only interested in advancement, that the death of Lady Sué would ill-serve Jiro, but even his refusal is useful to Kaede. It drives a wedge between Jiro and the only one of his advisors honest enough to contradict him. The second advisor carries out the orders with efficiency, returning with the head in the midst of the climactic battle.
The impact of Lady Kaede’s actions on the movie is a slow accumulation, but it is decisive. She pushes Taro not to settle, to push for more power. That leads directly to the banishment of Takatora, which leads directly to a harrowing conflict between Takatora’s men and his sons’ soldiers. That fight leads to Taro’s death, and the further splintering of the clan. Her whispers push Jiro too to push more aggressively for power than he otherwise would have. Viewed from the air, much of Ran is Kaede’s doing. She is the Littlefinger of this world, though we come to learn that she has no interest in climbing the ladder; she wants to burn it.
When Kurogane realizes the scale of Lady Kaede’s schemes, he confronts her. “Your scheming has destroyed the Ichimonji clan. Such is the vanity of women.”
“Vanity, you say,” she replies. I think it’s important to note that it isn’t a question. “I wanted to avenge my family. I wanted this castle to burn. I have done all I set out to do.” Kurogane kills her, striking her down in what has to be one of cinema’s bloodiest deaths, but it’s too late. She has already won.
Kurosawa didn’t populate Ran with many woman, but he knows exactly what he’s doing with them. Their absence is intentional. The few we do see end up dead to a one. They either commit suicide or are murdered. They live lives without agency. The best most of them can manage is a coping strategy, to pray and carry around illustrations of the Buddha. Their miserable ends are the point. They are flotsam moving with the tide.
But not Lady Kaede. Revisiting Ran all these years later, it became clear that I had short-changed her. She isn’t hungry for power like Lady Macbeth. She isn’t a pure machine of self-preservation like Scarlett O’Hara. She isn’t as possessive and ego-driven as Miss Piggy (and you thought I was just being silly). She has her eyes set on much larger prizes, and is astonishing in her capacity to navigate the strict limits imposed on her. Lady Kaede is as canny and capable as anyone. Come to think of it, she is the only character in Ran who achieves their goal.
With that in mind, I apologize, Lady Kaede. I did not recognize your game. You aren’t crazy in the least, and even if you were, I see now that I could hardly blame you.