EA 190 Shakespeare and Japan Week 8 Outline

Bibliography assignment
1. what indicates an edited volume? that “ed” follows the name of the scholar
2. use JSTOR and Project Muse databases to find your sources (much better than Academic Search Complete)
3. Look on Melvl rather than simply Antpac (how to request a book)
4. Why you want a hard copy – the bibliography of the book. But even if you can’t get it in hard copy you can find out what is in the book through searching for book reviews or even in Amazon.com
5. Academic websites tend to end edu. Eg Folger Shakespeare Library
6. Okay to use Wikipedia as a starting point for research. Scroll down to the sources section for internet sources.

Comparative Assignment
Listed some material on the schedule that will be helpful for people. Look at it!

CLASS ON RAN
I. Start with character identification

Hidetora

Ayabe

Fujimaki

Tango

Kyoami

Taro

Jiro

Saburo

Sue (Jiro's wife)

Kurogane (Jiro's top retainer)

Kaede (Taro's wife, later Jiro's)

Tsurumaru (Sue's brother)

II. BASIC STORY

III. Main theme of Ran?

Kurosawa:

"When I look at Japanese history what I see is how man repeats himself over and over again."

"I started out to make a film about Motonari Mori, the 16th century warlord whose three sons are admired in Japan as paragons of filial virtue. What might their story be like, I wondered, if the sons had not been so good? It was only after I was well into writing the script about these imaginary unfilial sons of the Mori clan that the similarities to Lear occurred to me. Since my story is set in medieval Japan, the protagonist's children had to be men; to divide a realm among daughters would have been unthinkable." (interview with Peter Gilli, p. 60)

IV. Journey of Self-Discovery in King Lear versus Ran

A. Missed points from last time.

1. Lear's madness comes and goes. When he feels compassion for other people he becomes noticably more sane. When he remembers his ungrateful daughters he becomes obsessive and repetitive ("kill, kill, kill, kill").

In King Lear whatever learning he does, happens at those moments when he is not obsessed with the injustice of his daughters. In Ran, whatever learning process he goes through, takes places at those moments where he comes face to face with his past, and acknowledges his mistakes.

B. Big difference between King Lear and Ran is that there isn't much motivation for:

1) why he divides his kingdom and

2) why the daughters hate him so much.

Kurosawa found this problematic:

"What has always troubled me about King Lear is that Shakespeare gives his characters no past. We are plunged directly into the agonies of their present dilemmas without knowing how they come to this point. How did Lear acquire the power that, as an old man, he abuses with such disastrous effects? Without knowing his past, I've never really understood the ferocity of his daughters' response to Lear's feeble attempts to shed his royal power. In Ran I've tried to give Lear a history. I try to make clear thathis power must rest on a lifetime of bloodthirsty savagery. Forced to confront the consequences of his misdeeds, he is driven mad. But only by confronting his evil head-on can he transcend it and begin to struggle again toward virtue." [rp 106]

Kurosawa added motivations in Throne of Blood for the same kinds of reasons.

C. Review of Lear in opening scene:

1. wants power and respect without the weight of authority that comes with it;
2. places conditions on his love (tell me how much you love me), but wants unconditional love in return;
3. believes that you can place an economic value on love and respect
4. wants his daughters to marry but wants them to remain his daughters.

Gloucester subplot sets son against son because of the rule of primogeniture.

In Ran we see the same kinds of criticisms:
1. a society in which concepts such as "kill or be killed" and "the low overthrow the high" have set the moral framework that Hidetora has followed most of his life, and which he now hopes to end by relinquishing power to his sons;
2. a society whose social chaos is considered symptomatic of the degenerate age of Buddhism (an age in which we must rely on the interventions of Buddhas and Bodhisattva’s to achieve enlightenment).

V. Scene analysis

1. Opening Scene: What do we know about Hidetora from this opening scene? Is Kurosawa clearer than Shakespeare about the good guys and the bad guys? Does he expect that you know the play and so know already who the good guys and the bad guys?

VI. Possible Summary:

From Kurosawa's point of view, what does this mean about our contemporary situation?

Can we control violence or will it control us? Is there such as thing as a "limited engagement" war?

Shakespeare is not questioning the system, the structure of government. He may have serious questions about the monarchy, but he does not make them obvious. Kurosawa seems to be making the point in these two movies that the system itself is flawed, and that any individual who is placed into the samurai system will be unable to escape from its structural violence.

Is there a god or gods who care what happens to human beings?