Buddhist Symbolism in Akira Kurosawa`s Ran: A Counterpoint to

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Buddhist Symbolism in Akira Kurosawa's Ran:
A Counterpoint to Human Chaos
Kenneth D. Nordin
Consider the Buddhist symbolism embedded in Akira Kurosawa's
jidaigeki, or medieval samurai, filmi^an (1985): Scroll images ofAmitabha, the
oldest and most important of the five celestial Buddhas. Another scroll featuring
Japanese calligraphy depicting the Buddhist path of enlightenment. A bow
and arrow. The Bodhi Tree. A sun and quarter moon ensign. A wreath of
flames. Lotus flowers. Grass. A white horse.
These symbols — which Kurosawa subtly wove into major scenes
throughout the movie — all point to the Buddhist path of enlightenment. At
the same time, they stand as powerful counterpoints to the chaos and
destruction upon which the movie is built, a film inspired by William
Shakespeare's play King Lear. While some scholars have noted the presence
of Buddhist imagery in Ran. no critic has paid close attention to the complete
inventory of the Buddhist symbols embedded in the film, or what they imply.1
The purpose of this paper is to provide such an analysis and to suggest that
Buddhist themes form important subtexts in the film.
These Buddhist symbols can be viewed as serving two purposes: First,
they provide signposts pointing toward the spiritual path of enlightenment
the Lord Ichimonji Hidetora seeks to gain when he gives up his lifetime of
savage warfare. These symbols appear so frequently that they underscore
Hidetora's spiritual intent. In the course of the film, the warlord experiences
intense psychological suffering for his sins; a traumatic shock makes hirn
insane; then, shortly before his death, he regains his sanity and undergoes a
transformation of character. Stephen Prince has pointed out that Kurosawa
viewed enlightenment and spiritual development as "necessarily dependent
upon shock" and notes this feature is present in many of his films, including
SanshirM, Drunken Angel, Seven Samuari, Red Beard, and Dersu Uzala
(1991:120-121).
Secondly, the film's Buddhist icons suggest that when humans ignore
enlightened spirituality, when they heap violence and warfare upon each other,
their lives will descend into chaos and self-destruction. Kurosawa hiniseu
stated this was a major concern ofRan. "[S]ome of the essential scenes of tins
film," he observed, "are based on my wondering how God and Buddha, if the}'
actually exist, perceive this human life, this mankind stuck in the same absurd
behavior patterns" (Prince, 1991: 285-286). Ran features several visual and
audio elements to suggest a divine presence. Clouds, for example, frequency
appear in myth and art as indicating the presence of God (Tressider, 1997:4bJKurosawa inserts cloud shots throughout the film, and they grow darker and
Asian Cinema. Fall/Winter 2005
more turbulent as the story unfolds. Other signs in the film suggesting that
the gods are watching include blowing winds and the shrill tones of a wooden
flute. The visual imagery of Buddhist symbols, however, often placed in the
background of scenes and bearing double meanings are the most pervasive
signs of a divine presence in the film. Kurosawa weaves these Buddhist icons
throughout the fabric of his cinematic story.
Before we explore this Buddhist symbolism, here is a brief synopsis of
the film's plot.
Lord Hidetora Ichimonji, age 70, decides to retire and leave his castles
and lands to his three sons. He chooses his eldest son, Taro, as his successor
and expects his two younger sons, Jiro and Saburo, to support him. Saburo
objects to his father's plans, and the warlord banishes him. Greed, rivalry, and
revenge fueled by Lady Kaede, Taro's wife, set in. The two older sons drive
Hidetora from their respective castles and then attempt to kill him in a third
castle. During a combined attack by Taro and Jiro upon Hidetaro and his
retainers, Jiro's top general kills Taro. All of Hidetaro's followers are slaughtered
in the attack. The horrified warlord fails in his attempt to commit suicide and
wanders in a deranged state of mind into a mountain wilderness. Sabaru, the
only son who loved him, returns from exile to rescue him. The pair reconcile
and Hidetaro becomes sane again. Then, Saburo is shot and killed by Jiro's
assassin. Heartbroken, Hidetora collapses over his dead son's body and dies.
All of this action occurs within the presence of the Buddhist symbolism,
making the drama even more poignant. Let's now explore these signs in the
order and within the context in which they app ear in the film.
Hidetaro meets Lady Sue. who expresses Buddhist consciousness.
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245
244
Bow and Arrow: Two Sacred Weapons
In the film's opening hunt scene, the great warlord Ichimonji Hidetora
(TatsuyaNakadai) shoots an old, wildboar with abow and arrow while mounted
on horseback. Hidetora's fierce, focused eye behind his drawn arrow presents
one of the most powerful images in the film. The hunt scene takes place just
before the old warlord abdicates his position in favor of his three sons. The
shooting of the old boar becomes a metaphor, foreshadowing the hunting down
of Hidetora by his two eldest sons Taro (Akira Terao) and Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu).
OnRan's visual surface a bow and arrow are emblems ofwar and hunting.
They define Hidetora's life. Their Buddhist significance, however, should not
be overlooked. Hidetora's drawn bow and arrow mark the beginning of his
search for spiritual enlightenment. Hidetora's fierce look—Kurosawa describes
the warlord's eyes as "hawkish" in his script (1) — as he releases the arrow
underscores his determination to follow a new path. In the Mahayana tradition,
the dominant form of Buddhism in medieval Japan, the bow and the arrow are
central symbols. Together, they represent knowledge, a signpost to absolute
emptiness or sunyata, the highest form of enlightenment. The bow and arrow
also reflect accuracy of the intellect driven by determination and will power
(Blau, 2003: 195). In Mahayana Buddhism, an enlightened being, or
bodhisattva, postpones his or her own spiritual liberation in order save other
humans first.
The fierce look Hidetora displays as he shoots his arrow in the opening
scene, therefore, marks the end of his warrior life and beginning of his search
for spiritual enlightenment.
Grass
The opening scenes of Ran, as well as a later scene in which Hidetora
has gone mad, are set in fields of tall, windblown, dark green grass. Dark green
grass is a Buddhist symbol for a long life. It is used in life-enriching ceremonies.
In Buddhist thought, grass is considered to be immortal and represents the
end of samsara, the successive death and rebirth of all things (Blau, 200y
147). Samsara is a Sanskrit word meaning "journeying," An individual continues
on this j ourney through various mo des of existence until lib eration is attained.
An individual becomes imprisoned in samara or the journey by three
"unwholesome roots" -hatred, craving, and delusion (Bercholz, 1993: 323).
Kurosawa places two major scenes in the film in wind-blown grass fields.
The film's opening springtime scenes are set in lush, green, pampas grass.
These scenes feature the boar hunt followed by the hunters' feast during
which Hidetora hands over his power to his sons. The second grass scene is
set in the Fall, when life is dying out in nature. It provides the setting i01
Kurosawa's descent into apparent madness. It occurs after the military force
ofTaro and Jiro, his two oldest sons, attack and kill his household and retainers
in the Third Castle. Kyomi, the fool, who is the most clear-sighted character n
Asian Cinema. Fall/Winter 2005
thefilm,sees in withered, autumn grass a metaphor representing the destruction
of Hidetora's entire clan. "How strange!" the fool sings, describing Hidetora's
state of mind, "On withered fields I see an entire clan destroyed by my hands,
each of them floating up before me" (Script, 120). Thus, the film's two grassy
scenes symbolize Hidetora's struggle to free himself from his sins as he
continues on with his spiritual quest, a journey, as the grass implies, that
could stretch over many life cycles.
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Hidetaro and Kyomi lost in the grass, a Buddhist symbol of infinity.
The Buddha Under the BodM Tree
One of the mo st important images in Buddhist iconography is that of the
Buddha sitting cross-legged under a banyan tree, the place where he first
achieved his state of enlightenment. The tree became known as the Bodhi
tree, meaning to be enlightened. In the Buddhist Mahayana tradition, bodhi is
equated to one's own buddha-nature, insight to the essential emptiness
{slmnyata) of the world (Bercholz, 1993: 314-315). Buddhist tradition holds
that while meditating under a banyan tree growing near the Nairajana River,
the king's son Siddhartha became the Buddha when he.discovered the four
noble truths and the eightfold path, the basic principles of Buddhism. The
Tour noble truths include the nature of suffering, the origin of suffering, the
cessation of suffering, and the path that leads to the cessation of suffering.
The "eightfold path" requires a right view, right resolve, right speech, right
livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration (Bercholz,
1993:317).
Kurosawa alludes to the icon of the Buddha under the Bodhi tree in an
ttnportant developing scene in Ran. Midway through the hunting party's
feast, Hidetora suddenly—and uncharacteristically — falls into a deep sleep
Asian Cinema, Fall/Winter 2005
246
or trance. To shelter his father from the glaring, western sun, his youngest son
Saburo (Daisuke Ryu) cuts off a small tree branch and places it next to him.
The image of the sleeping or meditating Hidetora, dressed in a white robe and
sitting cross- legged under a tree branch, replicates the Buddha's own act of
enlightenment.
The scene is another signpost of Hidetora's spiritual journey. Hidetora
suddenly awakens, alarmed by a dream. It's a dream of vast emptiness, the
ideal state of mind in Mahayana Buddhism. Hidetora tells the hunting party,
his look now wild-eyed, "I had a dream...a dream of wilderness. A
wilderness.. .no matter how far I went I saw no one. I shouted and screamed,
but no one answered...." (Script, 6). The dream has a double meaning. It
foreshadows the wilderness Hidetora eventually finds himself in when he
becomes mad. It also suggests that Hidetora's search for the enlightened path
has begun. The end of that search is nirvana, complete emptiness of the self,
the extinction of passion, illusion, and desire. The warlord encounters in his
dream, therefore, his spiritual destiny.
Sun and Quarter Moon
Another prominent Buddhist symbol that Kurosawa placed in the hunting
party scene is black bunting running across the background. On it is painted
Lord Hidetora's ensign composed of a sun and quarter moon. The sun is the
symbol of Japan, the land of the rising sun. As such, it symbolizes Hidetora's
military and political power. At the same time, the ensign depicts important
symbols in Buddhism. The sun, or surya in Sanskrit, represents masculinity.
The quarter moon, or chandra, represents the feminine principle. Paired
together, as they are in Hidetoro's ensign, the symbols represent the removal
of polarities. The sun and moon together symbolize perfect enlightenment,
with the sun or the masculine representing compassion and skillful means and
the moon or the female representing wisdom. The male also signifies the
noumenal world while the female represents the noumenal world (Blau, 2003:
88-89). Thus Hidetora's ensign as a symbol of his power is highly ironic when
seen in the context of Buddhist symbolism. It's early andhighly visible presence
in Ran further underscores Hidetora's toning away from his lifetime of warfare
to find spiritual peace.
The Calligraphy Scroll
Kurosawa maintains the irony associated with Hidetora's sun and quarter
moon ensign when the film's action shifts to an interior scene inside the First
Castle. Taro, Hidetora's oldest son, and Lady Kaede, Taro's wife, have taken
over control of the castle. The couple is sitting in the donjon on the castle's
top floor. The room is barren of decoration except for a scroll hanging behind
them. The scroll contains calligraphy representing the Buddhist path of
enlightenment. The scroll is hanging on the wall heretofore occupied by Lord
Hidetora's ensign. Lady Kaede, a personification of evil, notices that the
ensign is missing and demands that Taro retrieve it from his father. "That
standard is supposed to be with the head of the House of Ichimonji," she
declares (Script, 17) Taro never retrieves the ensign, and the scroll continues
to hang prominently in subsequent scenes in the same room, scenes featuring
seduction, betrayal, and plots of murder. The scroll becomes a counterpoint
to the sinful behavior of Taro, Jiro, and Lady Kaede in the room. It also is a
sign that the gods are watching, Kurosawa's underlying theme in the film.
Jiro, and Hidetora.
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248
Axnitabha: One of the Five Celestial Buddhas
After Taro and Lady Kaede drive Lord Hidetora from the First Castle, his
former home, he travels with his retainers to the Second Castle, now the
residence of second son Jiro and his wife Lady Sue. Hidetora's first act upon
entering the castle is to seek out Lady Sue (Yoshiko Miyazaki). The sun is
setting in the west, the domain of the Amitabha, the Buddha who rules over
the western paradise. Hidetora finds his daughter-in-law in a garden praying
with her rosary beads. Before the warlord reaches her3 he opens a cabinet
containing a scroll painted with a golden image ofAmitabha. Buddhist images
serve as aids in meditation. They represent purity and spiritual enlightenment.
An image of the Amitabha Buddha.
Amitabha, or Amida, as he is known in Japanese culture, is the Buddha
of Infinite Light. His skin color is red, reflecting his point on the compass —
west. His symbol is the lotus flower. His element is fire. Amitabha represents
the transformation from greed to enlightened wisdom. He is also the steward
of the Sukhavati Paradise, where beings reside before they reach redemption
and perfect enlightenment (Blau, 2003:41).
Hidetora and the Buddha appear to be looking at each other face to face.
Then, in the last light of day, the warlord approaches Lady Sue. His daughterin-law serves as the Buddhist conscience in the film. Many years earlier.
Hidetora had killed Sue's parents, gouged out the eyes of her brother
Tsurumaru, and burned down her family's castle. She was forced into a marriage
with Jiro. Her compassion toward Hidetora and her forgiveness of his sins
toward her astonish the old warlord.
Asian Cinema, Fall/Winter 2005
"Go on, hate me!" he tells her.
She replies, "I do not hate you. Everything has been preordained in our
previous lives.. .All things are the heart of the Buddha."
A pessimistic Hidetora then argues that Buddha has no effect in the
world. "The Buddha again? There are no Buddha's in today's world. This is a
degraded age, when the Buddha's guardians, Bonten and Taishaku, have
been routed by raging Asuras. It is not-a world where we can rely on the
Buddha's compassion" (Script, 33). His comment reflects Kurosawa's own
doubt about a divine presence in the world and whether the gods are watching.
Lady Sue looks sadly at her father-in-law at the end of their exchange.
She has become a Buddhist teacher to him, but he still understands little
about the path of enlightenment. He has more lessons to learn and more of his
past sins to confront. Hidetora's conversation with Sue" is an important
component in Kurosawa's concept of individual spiritual development. In
many of his films, as Stephen Prince has pointed out, verbal instruction by a
teacher is less important as a guide than is personal experience (1991: 121).
Hidetora is to face other, highly traumatic events in his spiritual journey. And,
another scroll image of the Amitabha Buddha appears later in the film.
A Wreath of Flames
In many of Kurosawa's films, as noted earlier, his protagonists are forced
to go through a shocking experience as a necessary step towards their spiritual
enlightenment (Prince, 1991:120-121). Perhaps the most memorable scene in
Ran is the burning of Castle Three, an experience so shocking to Hidetora that
he becomes insane. The forces of his two elder sons attacked the warlord
there, and his household and retainers all die. Kurogane (Hisashi Igawa),
counselor to Jiro, kills Taro during the attack, an act that puts Jiro at the head
of the clan. With flames, featuring the yellow and red colors of the flags
carried by Taro's and Jiro's soldiers — and underscoring their treacherous
and destructive behavior—licking around him, Lord Hidetora, now mentally
deranged, descends slowly from the ruined castle and disappears, alone, into
the wilderness.
The fire, like other symbols in the film, evokes a double meaning. On the
one hand, it represents the destructive nature of lust, greed, and warfare. The
burning castle symbolizes Hidetora's hell on earth. On the other hand, fire as
a purifying element in Buddhist thought is not to be overlooked. A fire wreath
in a Buddhist mandala represents the burning away of ignorance. Its light
drives out the darkness and opens the path to transcendental, spiritual wisdom
(Blau, 2003:79) Confronted by the darkest forms of evilHidetaro himself gave
birth to, he becomes insane. His slow descent through the burning castle and
then out into a wilderness of decaying grass symbolizes the beginning of his
Asian Cinema, Fall/Winter 2005
250
spiritual purification. The warlord's descent into madness and psychological
emptiness is a necessary step toward his spiritual transformation
251
The Lotus Flower
Here and there in Ran, Kurosawa embeds images of the lotus flower. It is
a symbol closely associated with the Amitabha Buddha, the dominant Buddha
image in the film. The lotus represents the path that leads from ignorance to
enlightenment. While its roots grow in muck-symbolizing human desires —
its leaves and flowers rise up to the sun, to enlightenment. In Buddhism the
lotus is also the most important symbol of purity. It represents the feminine
principle (the womb of the mother), the throne of the Buddha, and the centers
ofenergyinthebody(Blau,2003:171)
warlords defeated in battle by Lord Hidetora who then killed his vanquished
foes. Both daughters were forced to marry Hidetora's two oldest sons. As
Taro's wife, Lady Kaede lived in the castle that had once belonged to her
family. Her own mother had committed suicide in the castle. Lady Sue chose
to follow the Buddhist path of enlightenment to find healing for her sufferings.
Through her Buddhist faith she was able to forgive Hidetora's cruelties. Lady
Kaede, by contrast, followed a path of revenge and sought to destroy Lord
Hidetora and his clan. To achieve her goal, she used treachery, sexual
seduction, assassination, and warfare. During her final counsel with Jiro, she
ignores the powerful Buddhist symbol of the lotus flower she sits in front of.
Her rejection of that symbol of feminine wisdom, purity and spiritual
enlightenment ultimately leads to her own beheading, as if she were a snake,
by General Kurogane, Jiro's counselor. Thus Lady Kaede becomes the
antithesis of the Buddhist ideal of femininity, an ideal expressed by the lotus
flower she ignores.
Taro and Lady Kaede plot murder in front of lotus flowers, a Buddhist symbol of
purity.
A White Horse
Saburo, Hidetora's youngest son, whom the warlord disinherits at the
beginning of Ran and with whom he reconciliates at the end of the film, rides
a white horse. Saburo is the noblest samurai in the film, and, characteristic of
a hero, he treats his white steed with kindness. A white horse evokes a multitude
of symbolic meanings in Buddhist myth and legend. It is the hero's companion.
It is also a symbol of death. Both meanings come into play when Saburo and
Hidetora reconcile at the film's tragic end. "While father and son joyfully ride
together on the white horse, Saburo is shot and killed by Jiro's assassins
lying in ambush. A distraught Hidetora flings himself over his son's fallen
body and dies, heartbroken.
The white horse is more than a symbol of companionship and death in
Buddhist tradition. It can represent Buddha himself. Before Prince Siddhrtha
becomes the Buddha, he rode a white horse named Kanthaka. In fact, when
the prince renounced his royal inheritance to seek the path of enlightenment,
he abandoned his family's royal palace riding Kanthaka. Further, the precious
white horse in Buddhism is one of the treasures of the Chakravartin Buddha,
a Buddha whose all-encompassing teachings are universally true (Blau, 2003:
163). Chakravartin's precious white horse symbolizes mobility and speed.
According to Buddhist myth, it is able to circle the world three times a day.
Buddhist legends abound in which the Buddha takes the form of a white
horse to serve as a savior and spiritual guide for humans.2
Can it be that Hidetora's ride on a white horse at the end of his life, when
he has regained his mental senses and for the first time in his life experiences
love and joy, symbolizes that he is finally on the path toward spiritual
enlightenment? The white horse, as a sign of Buddha, suggests the spiritual
The lotus image becomes most visible just before the climactic battle in
Ran. As Jiro leaves for battle to fight the combined forces of Saburo and the
warlords Fujimaki and Ayabe, Lady Kaede, now his lover, calls him to her
room. She sits, ironically in front of a dark screen painted with lotus flower
blossoms. She challenges her lover to assassinate Saburo. She has alreadysent out assassins to kill Lady Sue, Tiro's wife. The flowers are another subtle
sign Kurosawa has embedded in the film to suggest that the gods might be
watching with sorrow the human folly unfolding before their eyes. Moreover,
these are humans who are oblivious to their need for spiritual enlightenment.
Lady Kaede's character is the exact opposite of Lady Sue's character,
although their lives parallel each other. Both women were the daughters of
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252
!
journey of the two dead samurai is not over. In reincarnated forms, they will
continue to seek nirvana.
An Image of the Amitabha Buddha Once Again
In Ran's final scene, Tsurumaru, the blind brother of Lady Sue, stands
on an edge of the ruins of his family's castle clutching a scroll bearing a
golden image of Amitabha, the western sky Buddha. His sister had given it to
him for his protection when she left him to fetch his flute, only to meet her
assassins. Behind him the sun is setting in the West. Tsurumaru drops the
Buddhist scroll over the cliff where it falls into a crevice. Then he steps back,
forlorn and alone. A subsequent panning shot of a barren wilderness brings the
film to an end.
Thus Kurosawa leaves open the question, "can humankind ever save
themselves from desire, hatred and delusion?" Tsurumaru's blindness now
becomes a metaphor for the blindness of all humanity.
After Hidetora dies, Kurosawa has Kyoami, the fool, pose the question
whether there is ever a divine presence in the world. "Is there no God or
Buddha in the world?" he yells. "Damnation! God and the Buddha are nothing
but mischievous urchins! Are they so bored hi Heaven that they enjoy watching
men die like worms? Damn God! Is it so amusing to see and hear human beings
cry and scream?" (Script, 183).
•
■
2
5
3
I not slander god or the Buddha!" Tango replies. "They are the ones who are
1 crying. The evil of human beings.. .the stupidity of the sinful creatures, who
I'.. believe their survival depends on killing others, repeated again and again
f
throughout all time...Even God or the Buddha cannot save us from if' (Script,
I , 183).
||;
Tango's answer to Kyoami's question reflected Kurosawa's own view of
!>' the problem of evil in human nature. In an interview in 1986 with Kyoko
I Hirano, a year after Ran began its theater run, the filmmaker said " [T]he world
• j will not change unless we steadily change human nature itself and our very
I.; way of thinking. We have to exorcise the essential evil in human nature, rather
1
than presenting concrete solutions to problems or directly depicting social
j , : problems"(23).
I:-:
The final image of the Amitabha Buddha in Ran, a golden figure painted
I ; on a scroll lying in barren rock, poses a question: will humans ever free
j themselves from desire, hatred, and delusion? Or, like Tsurumaru , the film
j ' asks, "will they remain blind to their spiritual potential?"
I
"1 Endnotes
J
1. Most commentators on Ran view Lord Hidetora's Ichimonji's mental state
I
as a decline into madness from which he recovers only briefly before his
I
death, paralleling the mental deterioration of King Lear in Shakespeare's
i'.
play. But Kip Jones, an authority on aging and diversity, argues that
I ;.■
'
Hidetora'psychological transformation can be regarded as a mental process
1 ':■ that older people often go through as they take stock of their entire life and
|,:::
seek some spiritual meaning out of it. "The film's intensely felt humanist
I -'
message, its encompassing hallucinatory effects, the obscuring of characters
I':
in a landscape of time and space, its insistence upon Buddhist principles of
§/"
redemption, forgiveness and lack of hatred and its overall description of a
f:: - decent from power and a confrontation with past deeds," Jones observes
II
"—all present evidence for the consideration for the character through the
1 ■■'. lens of gerotranscendence" (2002: 5).
1 ' 2. For a fuller discussion of Kurosawa's utilization of Buddhist horse symbolism
I.'
in his samuari films, see my article (Nordin, 2003).
■§ ■■
Hidetaro confronts the Buddha.
Tango (Masayuki Yui), Hidetora's chief retainer and bodyguard, offers
an answer to Kyoami's metaphysical question. The problem lies not with the
gods but with humans themselves who behave ungodlike, he suggests. "Do
Asian Cinema, Fall/Winter 2005
I
I ■
1
j
\l/
r
f'
I
References
Bercholz, Samuel and Sherab ChodzinKohn, eds. 1993. Entering the Stream:
An Introduction to The Buddha and His Teachings. B oston: Shambhala.
Blau, Tatjana and Mirabai. 2003. Buddhist Symbols. New York: Sterling
Publishing Co.
Goodwin, James. 1994. Akira Kurosawa andIntertextaal Cinema. Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press.
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254
Gunapayuta. 1977. A Pictorial Biography of Skyamimi Buddha. ChineseEnglish. Translated by Bhiku Jan Hai and Z. A. Lu. Taipei: The Corporate
Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation.
Hirano, Kyoko. 1986. "Making Films for All the People: An Interview with
Akira Kurosawa." Cineaste. 14:4.
Jones, Kip. 2002. "The Spiritual Dimension: A GerotranscentalTake On Akira
Kurosawa's Film 'Ran'." Paper presented at International Association
of Gerontology. 34thEBSSRS Symposium onAging and Diversity. Bergen,
Norway.
Kurosawa, Akira. 1982. Something Like ait Autobiography. Translated by
Audie E. Bock. New York: Vintage Books.
Kurosawa, Akia, dir. 1985. DVD. Ran. Perf. TatsuyaNakadai, MiekoHarada,
and Peitah.
Maguire, Jack. 2001. Essential Buddhism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs and
Practices. New York: Pocket Books.
Morgan, Diane. 2001. The Best Guide to Eastern Philosophy and Religion.
Los Angeles: Renaissance Books.
Nordin, Kenneth D. 2003. "Images ofUma (Horses) in the Samurai Films of
Akira Kurosawa." Asian Cinema. 14:2 (Fall/Winter).
Prince, Stephen. 1991. The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema ojAkira Kurosawa.
Revised and Expanded Edition. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press.
Richie, Donald. 1998. The Films of Akira Kurosawa. Third edition expandedand
updated with anew epilogue. Berkeley, CA: The University of California
Press.
Tressider, Jack. 1997. Dictionary of Symbols: An Illustrated Gidde to
Traditional Images, Icons, and Emblems. SanFrancisco: Chronicle Books.
Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. 2000. Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Kenneth D. Nordin, Ph.D. is a professor of communication arts atBenedictine
University, Lisle, Illinois. He teaches one film course each semester in addition
to his courses in journalism, mass communication theory, and cultural historyHe has delivered and published many papers on film.
255
Tjhansmodern Space in Tsai Ming-Liang's The Hole
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Jasmine Nadua Trice
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/
InTsaiMingrLiang's 1998 film, TheHole, the barrier between two urban
dwellers opens in the form of a small, round break in/the man's floor and the
woman's ceiling; this hole challenges the divides between bodies and buildings,
dreaming and waking. It becomes more than a simple puncture between floors,
a flaw to be patched up. Itds a litemlpunctum, drawing the characters towards
its revolutionary potential.\The film offers images of that Utopian potential in
its juxtaposition of apocalyptic urban decay with the euphoric extravagance
of the movie musical, a parallel world that sends the Man Upstairs, the Woman
Downstairs and several dancers into joyous song and dance sequences across
the barren hallways and derelict\stairwells.
This complex mixture of elation and desolation is fitting for the film's
cultural context, aperiod of millennialirepidation marked by ambivalent feelings
towards issues significant to many of Tsai's works: modernity, urbanism, and
everyday life. Tsai presented The Bole as part of the "2000 as seen by..."
series, an international group of cinematic mediations on millennium anxiety.
His filmic commemoration of this temporal transition creates a vision of a city
reeling from its own rapid conversion to modernity. Taipei at the turn of the
century is a dystopia overtaken by both physical and psychic disease. In its
depiction of a viral, infectious modernization, The Hole offers a picture of
Taiwanese "transmodernity," a term Enrique Dussel suggests as an alternative
to modernity or postmodernity. Transmodernity opposes Euro-centrism
through its emphasis on cross-cultural exchanges, rather than one-way
changes imposed by the center upon its periphery (Lu, 2002:19). Through the
weaving of dystopian and Utopian universes, The Hole suggests
transmodernity's dual nature, offering viewers a two-sided coin containing
both alienating despair and liberating promise. The film's connection to
millennial modernity emerges in its depiction of the preparious border between
bodies and buildings, between consumption, excretion*, and penetration, and
between generic conventions. An overview of Tsai's place within Taiwanese
film, the relationship between the body and the city's boundaries, and Taipei's
^easymodernization will contextualize the film's image of aTaiwanese millennium.
Visions ,6f Transition
Viewing The Hole as an emblem of Taiwan's late 20th Century transition
to a glbbal city, Tsai Ming-Liang is perhaps the most fitting narrator of this
evolutionary, internationalizing period. Tsai was bom in Kuching, Malaysia
in 1957, where his grandparents introduced him to films from China, Taiwan,
Asian Cinema, Fall/Winter 2005
Asian Cinema, Fall/Winter 20'05