The haiku 饾様饾槩饾槫饾槪饾槮饾樀饾槱 : Shakespearean antithetical minimalism in Kurosawa鈥檚 Kumonosu-jo

Abstract

A distinctive feature of Kumonosujo is Akira Kurosawa's tendency to 'purposely restrict ... himself' (Richie 1973: 120). According to Donald Richie, the result is filmic minimalism of an extraordinary kind: 'visually; the film is a marvel because it is made of so little: fog, wind, trees, mist - the forest and the castle' (1973: 120). Strangely, however, Richie does not associate such filmic terseness with Zen influences on Japanese artists who 'tend to use the fewest words or strokes of the brush to express their feelings' (Suzuki 1973: 25 7). The Zen principle of concision is undoubtedly fundamental to Japanese aesthetics. Hence, the seventeen-syllable brevity of haiku poetry and the visual sparseness of monochrome ink painting. As Stryk points out, 'the appeal of haiku is not unlike that of a sumie (ink-wash) scroll by Sesshu, and many haiku poets, like Busan, were also outstanding painters' (Stryk and Ikemoto 1981: 21 ). Quite possibly, Kumonosu-jo owes its visual style to such artists, for not only did Kurosawa receive his 'early training [ ... ] in painting' (Zambrano 1974: 262) but, more importantly, he found in haiku poetry a constant source of inspiration. Significantly, besides recalling his wartime habit of 'construct[ ing] haiku poems', Kurosawa also confesses his ardent belief that 'the only way to make a successful film is to apply the same kind of very concentrated interest' that is absolutely necessary to haiku poetry. What Kumonosujo offers is intense haiku minimalism. It is also worth pointing out that Kurosawa was attracted not only by the essential concision of the haiku lyric but also, and more crucially, by its tendency to collapse condensation into antithesis, whereby something becomes simultaneously both itself and its opposite. For instance, Basho's haiku - 'Spring night/ cherry-/blossom dawn' (Stryk 1985: 26) - rests on a spatio-temporal disjunction which intermeshes darkness and light in a flash of insight. Such antithetical concision is not only a defining feature in Kurosawa's cinematic reworking of Macbeth, but it also reflects 'one of the predominant characteristics of the general style of the play, which consists of multitudinous antitheses'.