Summary
Taro and Jiro approach the castle. Taro suddenly gets shot by one of Jiro's generals, and a large battle breaks out between the two brothers' soldiers. Jiro asks his general what has become of Ichimonji, and the general tells him that his father will surely commit seppuku, ritual suicide.
Burning arrows fly into the tower, as Ichimonji sits in silence, seemingly driven to madness by the betrayal he has endured. After the fighting has died down, Ichimonji prepares to kill himself, but then decides against it. He stands in the middle of the fires overtaking the tower and waits until all of Jiro's soldiers have left, then wanders down the stairs and out of the castle, a stricken look on his face. There are soldiers assembled outside the castle, and they part as he makes his way through the center and out into the wilderness, unharmed. Jiro's general advises Jiro to kill his father, but he simply watches as Ichimonji walks away.
Suddenly, we see Tango and Kyoami riding on a horse towards the Third Castle. They spot Ichimonji and ride towards him in the middle of a stormy field. They bow down to Ichimonji, who collects flowers and appears to have gone mad. "In a mad world, only the mad are sane," says Kyoami. Suddenly Ichimonji becomes anxious, experiencing a vision of his sinful life.
Tango and Kyoami approach a small hut and ask to stay the night there. While the dweller of the house initially will not take them in, they eventually force their way in. Inside, the owner of the house sits very still and does not look up at them. They lay Ichimonji down and ask the owner of the house for something to put over Ichimonji before realizing that the peasant with whom they are staying is blind.
Ichimonji wakes up, restored to his sanity. "Too bad, he was better off mad," Kyoami says, as Ichimonji recounts the fact that Taro and Jiro betrayed him and tried to have him killed. "I'm the one who should have died," he cries, as the peasant drops a blanket on the ground. Tango mistakes the peasant for a woman, but the peasant corrects him. As they light a fire, Tango recognizes the peasant as Tsurumaru, the brother of Lady Sué, Jiro's wife.
Tsurumara says that he was only a boy when Ichimonji burned down their castle and gouged his eyes out. "I tried to be like my sister, to pray to Buddha, to rid myself of the hatred that is always within me, but for a single day I could not forget. Not one night do I ever sleep in peace." He says that he has a flute, a present from his sister, and takes it out to play it as a symbol of hospitality. As Tsurumara plays his flute, Ichimonji becomes agitated and falls through the door into the grass outside.
The scene shifts to Jiro presenting a braid of Taro's hair to Kaede. He speaks reverently of his brother, but Kaede simply asks Ogura where Taro's body is. Jiro tells her that they did not bring the body because of the heat from the fire, and burned it instead. When she asks for her husband's armor and helmet, Jiro becomes impatient, suggesting that he is now wearing the armor himself. He calls for his men to help him take the armor off, and begins to undress in front of Kaede. Meanwhile, she picks up Taro's hair and wanders over to another room with it.
Suddenly, we see Jiro on his throne, dismissing the servants who betrayed Taro. Just as the servants are being dismissed, Lady Kaede enters the court to speak with Jiro. She enters carrying Taro's helmet and sits before Jiro, apologizing for her harsh words earlier. She alludes to the fact that Ichimonji has descended into madness, and Jiro suggests that that news ought to make her happy, as she hates Ichimonji. She hands over Taro's helmet to Jiro, before grabbing his knife and holding it to his throat. "Now prepare to die!" she screams, but he insists that he did not kill Taro. "It was Kurogane who killed him!" he gasps, but she is not so satisfied by his answer, insistent that it was he who gave the orders to kill Taro. She closes the sliding doors that surround them, cackling, then walks towards him with the knife. "The truth is, I don't care at all about my husband's death," she says, "The only thing that concerns me is what happens to me! I refuse to live like a widow with my hair cropped, or a nun rotting inside a convent, with my head shaved! This castle once belonged to my father. And I have no intention of leaving!"
Kaede tells Jiro that she will tell no one about his crimes, if he takes care of her and makes her his wife. She kisses him abruptly, then licks the slice she made on his neck with the knife.
Analysis
Against the odds, Ichimonji outlives the horrifying attempt on his life at the Third Castle. We see images of the horrors of battle—men with arrows in their eyes, blood pouring down, flaming arrows shooting all around Ichimonji's face—but Ichimonji stays completely still, shocked by the betrayal of his subjects yet again. When everything has calmed, he manages to wander out of the castle completely unscathed, as if protected by a halo of his own ignorance and shock.
Kurosawa often shoots Ichimonji's face in a tight closeup to highlight the emotions of his fall from power. One of the most striking shots of the film is when he is descending from the steps of the Third Castle as it erupts in flames. Smoke surrounds the old man and he seems almost completely unaware of what has just taken place, a subtle madness flashing across his unblinking eyes. Kurosawa shoots his face in a striking closeup as he walks down the stairs, then shoots the scene from a much wider distance, so that we can see the wreckage and chaos that surrounds the fallen patriarch.
After the atrocities at the Third Castle, Ichimonji goes mad, but his madness is also connected to his sins on earth. In the field, reunited with Tango and Kyoami, Ichimonji suffers from visions of his former conquests and all the people he has killed. While he is overtaken by an irrational madness, these visions also mark the first time that he develops a conscience about his past misdeeds. In this way, Ichimonji finally understands that his war-mongering legacy has been a mistake, but only when it is too late.
Even once he returns to sanity, Ichimonji is haunted by ghosts of his past. When he, Tango, and Kyoami wander into a blind peasant's house in the countryside, they suddenly realize that the peasant is Tsurumara, the brother of Jiro's wife, Sué. In fact, Ichimonji was the one who blinded him all those years ago, and ruined his life. As Tsurumara begins to play his flute for the fallen warlord, Ichimonji becomes agitated, overcome with remorse about his past violence.
The plot weaves a tangled web of lies, deceit, and power hunger. The character who proves the most desperate to maintain their power is Lady Kaede. In a shocking scene, she visits Jiro and threatens to cut his throat, before blackmailing him with all she knows: in exchange for her silence about his murder of Taro, he must have an affair with her and keep her within his sphere of influence. She cackles as she delivers her blackmail, before abruptly kissing him and licking the blood from the wound she inflicted on his neck. The image is striking in its depiction of a character determined to maintain their power by whatever means necessary.
