The Fool

Luckily, his horsing around was kept to minimum as he developed into a more serious, sorrowful figure later on. But yeah his annoying act did threaten to harm the picture in a major way at some point (Kurosawa was allegedly a big admirer of John Ford - thank god he did not follow the American´s suit as far as Ford´s disastrous penchant for populating his films with goofy caricatures is concerned).



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

well, he certainly was a wise-cracker, and had some very interesting remarks - a bit unusual, though, for his age, and maybe for the upbringing .

it's just, it seemed a bit odd as character, like, even Kurosawa sort of made of him a study, an experiment ... I remember the scene when Kyoami, the clown, pokes fun at Taro, the new Lord - comparing him with an empty gourd in the wind, if I'm not wrong - and one of Taro's guards is almost close to splitting him in half, if not for Lord Hidetora, who kills the soldier with an arrow .. well, that's actually what would have happened to Kyoami (being split in half) in the first place for daring to crack jokes & playing the smart guy in front of his master. Those times were very strict, in terms of etiquette and order.

And I don't think he's meant to be unimportant - Kurosawa needed somebody to fulfill the part of the Shakespearean fool, somebody that stresses the facts for the audience, in this case maybe to explain to the foreign audiences what a Japanese person would have understood without too many words(relationship between relatives, the importance of different objects for the lord of the castle, etc)... but it was odd to have a jester :-)

yep, Kyoami is full of snappy lines and crazy enough to verge on losing his head - literally . He is so much English, yet heavy with oriental wisdom, and so much Japanese, but, as you put it, so close to Hidetora, as if he would have been part of the old ruler (then, who knows what exactly had happened many years ago behind those palace silent doors).

I came to like the fool a lot :o) but I see him as a sort of unreal, ghost-like (but not in the scary & invisible way) character . Somebody who knows, feels and understands a lot like you would.

Traditionally, the jester at court was expected to tell the truth when everybody else didn't. In an entertaining manner that is, to earn him the jester's license that freed him from repercussions. And that's pretty much what the guy did.

It's a fairly interesting dynamics between those two. Even though Hidetaro became angry pretty much each time he was reminded of his idiocies he seemed to be quite attached nevertheless. To the point of saving the jester's life even, much to the dismay of his son. An attachment that the jester appeared to feel likewise, suggesting that there were human qualities to be found in Hidetaro many of us probably weren't immediately aware of.

...or maybe Lord Hidetora was a sugar-daddy ... (:o.