Revenge stories have been a common trope in literature spanning across all cultures, times, contexts, and date back to some of the earliest literary works—and rightfully so. Revenge tales are interesting, they are an easy outline for structuring a story, setting up a clear protagonist and antagonist, and is malleable for the author, allowing them to give their own commentaries on the theme itself. A good portion of the most renowned early literary epics incorporate a revenge theme or rely on a revenge narrative; the enraged Archilles’ self-destructive revenge against Hector; Odysseus’ cathartic slaughter of suitors following his long-spanning return from Troy; vengeance as a testament to Beowulf’s bravery; Ahab’s willingness to forfeit the lives of him and his crew in his pursuit for revenge. Whatever the author’s intentions or reader interpretation, as there have been centuries of analysis and debate on the subject in relation to their specific pieces, revenge has always remained as one of the most dominating themes in literature.
As any medium, however, literature is limited by virtue of a medium for storytelling. There are aspects that are unique and only communicable through text, and there are not. There is no commenting on the cinematography of Melville’s Moby Dick, unless referring to a film adaptation, which is still not applicable as it is no longer Melville’s alone—it becomes an interpretation of the work. There is no way to transfer from one medium to another without fundamental change to the original work. Even “truthful” adaptations are only assumed as such because they don’t change the plot as viewed from an outside audience. What literature can do with inner thought, commentary, and dialogue, is far less achievable in plays and films, and vice versa. Mediums more or less exist as one enormous and ever-moving Venn diagram, depending on if viewed from generalizations or specific media. All of this is neither here nor there, the point being that the difference in mediums causes the works produced within them to work within their unique aspects and limitations.
And so, that brings us to Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and Tsuruya Nanboku IV’s The Ghost Stories at Yotsuya on the Tokaido. Although being different mediums, one a film and one a play, there is that overlap with the generalized mediums, and even more with the two specific pieces. Particularly, the use of supernatural elements in both of the works—spirits that either directly or indirectly contribute to the death and ruin of the main character—are as much results of the limitations of expression within the mediums when it comes to feelings of guilt or remorse as they are plot devices. In adhering to the style of their chosen mediums, Throne of Blood and Ghost Stories are in a way, restricted to using spirits as a way in furthering the inner conflict or turmoil of the “main characters” as way to not step outside of the medium and rely on inner dialogue or exposition. It’s important note that both works are centered around antagonists. In framing the stories in such a way, the audience can only build minor amounts of empathy, thus placing the burden of displaying their emotional turmoil on action-oriented events, happening to be the use of spirits.
In Nanboku’s Ghost Stories, Oiwa as the vengeful spirit tormenting and ultimately leading to the demise of her murderer Iemon, is not only a character key to the plot, but as a spirit her appearance, importantly the lack-of in scenes she isn’t present, invoke terror and stress for Iemon. Being that the play was originally written for kabuki theater, which is a medium heavily reliant on movement and dance, body paint, and costumes, these elements are the primary communicators for Iemon’s emotions. In Ghost Stories, Oiwa’s spirit throughout Act III and the second half of Act V continually wear down Iemon. In the stage directions for “Snake Mountain Hermitage,” the second half of Act V, Iemon’s clothing and makeup are described in detail. His “[…] dirty black kimono and grey obi typical of a destitute ronin” (Brandon 155) is a costuming choice specifically meant to illustrate Iemon’s lowered place in society as a result of his actions. The purposeful adjective choice of “dirty” and “destitute” is emphasizing the importance of costuming to be communicable and exaggerated enough for the audience to pick up on this without explicit mention, and it doubles as a way to show Iemon’s lack of self-care resulting from the stress of Oiwa’s torment of him. His makeup is also described in stage directions as “[…] pale and feverish, framed by bushy, unkempt hair that signifies illness bordering on madness” (Brandon 155). Again, stage direction is not visible to the audience, so the inference of the makeup is remorse, guilt, and fear from Iemon due to Oiwa. Satoko Shimazaki points out in her essay “The End of the ‘World’: Tsuruya Nanboku IV’s Female Ghosts and Late-Tokugawa Kabuki” that Oiwa’s spirit is a specific trope in Japanese ghost stories, called ubume. Shimazaki notes that ubume, “[…] would have had deep psychological resonances for the audience of Nanboku’s day” (209). Ubume became such a staple in kabuki theater, particularly Nanboku’s other works, to the point where “[Ubume became] central to [Nanboku’s] plays [and overturned] kabuki’s conventional reliance on an established body of basic plot structure[…]” (Shimazaki 213). Shimazaki elaborates on that “established body of basic plot structure” present in kabuki, explaining that playwrights often had to consult and follow manuals because the medium of kabuki tended to be so strict. Nanboku’s subversion of kabuki through plays like Ghost Stories shows that the centralization of ubume as a dramatic device. Oiwa’s spirit drives the plot forward by being a psychological terror to Iemon, one that is understandable to the audience because of the degradation of Iemon’s appearance and desperate movement and dance as the acts continue, and the terror generated from the audience at Oiwa’s “grotesque” and frightening appearance. The visual “spectacle” of spirits—especially Ghost Stories—as a plot device relies on audience and performance, and kabuki theater allows for and relies on said spectacle because of kabuki as a medium for storytelling itself.
Similarly, Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 film Throne of Blood, a visual retelling of Shakespear’s Macbeth, chooses to use a spirit as way of a plot device and showing of the main character, Washizu’s, inner turmoil. Film, being more malleable as a medium and less restricted to rules than kabuki, still has its limitations. Notably, directors commonly have their unique marks and staples on film that deviate from traditional formats and make their works much more personal to themselves, almost like a ruleset they place themselves as artists. Just as Nanboku used ubame as a way of stylizing his own work and changing kabuki at large, Kurosawa’s filmography also heavily utilizes specific themes that ultimately govern the “end result” for his films. Chris Marker’s 1985 documentary A.K., filmed during the production of Kurosawa’s 1985 film Ran—interestingly another adaptation of Shakespear’s work, based off King Lear—is a very subjective style of documentary that offers a lot of insight into Kurosawa’s preferences for themes as well as stylizations in the medium itself. Marker notes Kurosawa’s attention to the historic accuracy of costuming, the extreme specification of camera angles and framing, and sound design. These elements are all standards or “rules” that Kurosawa held himself to when producing films. There’s also mention of the ways Kurosawa communicates themes or emotion to the audience through his own repeated tropes employed in his work, horses and rain being the center of focus in the documentary. I-Chun Wang’s article “Intermedial Representations in Asian Macbeth-s” expands further on these tropes, writing, “The spectacles that Kurosawa represents include landscape, bodies, ghosts, horses[…]” (4). These spectacles “[…] not only reinforces spatial significance and visual dimensions, but creates inner conflicts of the characters” (4). Washizu’s interactions with the ghost are important for showing this inner conflict, and the settings for these interactions emphasize his emotions. When the ghost of Miki appears before Washizu after his ordered assassination, he does not speak or move. Washizu’s panic and terror is communicated through his frantic movement and facial expressions, and the film deliberately has no accompanying score for the scene. The appearance of the ghost only to Washizu, but also the audience as result of being a film, and Washizu’s reaction to the ghost convey his “[…] irritated and terrified presence of the ghost [as well as] the desire to subdue his rival” (Wang 4). During the final meeting between Washizu and the spirit, Kurosawa uses the spectacles of rain, horses, and the ghost to show the intensity of the inner turmoil Washizu feels. The agitated turning of the horse, the volatility of the weather, and particularly the formally-dormant ghost’s animated demeanor—almost dance-like with movement while costumed as a warrior—show Washizu’s frantic emotions during the latter part of the film.
Kurosawa and Nanboku, although working within different mediums, utilize the trope of a spirit both as central to a plot structure, but also visually as a way to communicate the emotional turmoil of the main characters within the works. Nanboku’s Ghost Stories relies on the visual spectacle of a ghost as a terrorizer and stressor to Iemon by giving Oiwa a grotesque appearance meant to also shock the audience as she would Iemon. Paired with the changing costuming, makeup, and movement of Iemon, it works to establish and clarify the characters inner conflict. Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood also utilizes a spirit alongside environmental tropes commonly employed by Kurosawa and focusing shots of Washizu’s expression to bring the audience to an understanding of his emotions without any explicit statements. Both of these works come from mediums more reliant on visual storytelling and share the use of spirits as a way to illustrate inner turmoil of the main character to the audience.
Works Cited
James R. Brandon, and Samuel L. Leiter. Kabuki Plays On Stage. Volume 3 : Darkness and
Desire, 1804-1864. University of Hawaii Press, 2002. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2113123&site=ehost-live.
Kurosawa, Akira. (Director). (1957). Throne of Blood [Film]
Marker, Chris. (Director). (1985). A.K. [Documentary]
Shimazaki, Satoko. “The End of the ‘World’: Tsuruya Nanboku IV’s Female Ghosts and Late-
Tokugawa Kabuki.” Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 66, no. 2, 2011, pp. 209–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41686466.
Wang, I.-Chun. “Intermedial Representations in Asian Macbeth-S.” CLCWeb: Comparative
Literature and Culture, vol. 13, no. 3, 2011, https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1801.
Sprockets and Springes 