Summary
After seducing Jiro, Kaede tells him that she wants to be his wife. He offers to divorce Sué for her, but that is not enough. She instead wants him to kill his wife, a plan to which he tentatively agrees. Kaede weeps and suggests that she could not bear knowing that there is another woman that he slept with.
Kyoami and Ichimonji sit in a field of flowers. The fool says, "If fate had decreed it, Tsurumaru would be living here. Just imagine, you're taking refuge in the very castle you destroyed." Ichimonji is silent, but smiles, which makes Kyoami laugh.
Elsewhere, Tango heats something in a pot over a fire, before going to Ichimonji. Kyoami is putting a helmet that he made out of grass on the warlord's head, with two lilies on either side, like plumes. Tango approaches Ichimonji, as Kyoami announces the arrival of the servants whom Jiro just dismissed from his court.
They try to explain what happened, as Tango calls them traitors. Suddenly Ichimonji appears at the crest of the hill and the men ride away hastily. When Tango catches up to one of the traitors, the man tells him that Jiro killed Taro and intended to kill Ichimonji. "His madness saved him," the man says, before warning him that if Ichimonji's senses come back, Jiro will have him killed.
Tango rides back and tells Kyoami and Ichimonji that they have to go to Saburo. Kyoami warns him that Ichimonji runs off at the mention of Saburo, so Tango decides that the only thing to do is bring Saburo there. Tango rides off to fetch Saburo.
The scene shifts to Jiro telling an advisor, Kurogane, that he wants to make Kaede his wife. Kurogane thinks that it is Jiro's right to take Kaede as his wife, but to have Sué killed would be "an act of complete folly." He refuses to do Jiro's bidding, as Kaede enters and tells Kurogane to make sure he salts Sué's head before bringing it back.
That night, Ichimonji and Kyoami sleep in a wrecked castle on beds of straw. Just as Kyoami resolves to make a run for it, Ichimonji begins to awaken and Kyoami decides to stay after all. "Just think, ever since I was a child, I've been his nursemaid," Kyoami says, before lying down next to him and weeping.
Kurogane returns to Jiro's court with Sué's head wrapped in cloth. "I have followed your instructions to the letter," he says, and invites Kaede and Jiro to examine the head. Kaede opens the bundle to look at Sué's head, but finds a statue of a fox head inside. She becomes incensed, accusing Kurogane of tricking them. "The crafty fox...First he becomes human, and then he turns himself into stone!" Kurogane says, as Kaede shrieks at him. Kurogane uses the statue as a symbol for Kaede's deception, to try to convince Jiro not to trust his sister-in-law.
When he leaves, Kaede confronts Jiro about promising to have Sué killed. "Is this how you keep our bargain? Conspiring with Kurogane to humiliate me?" she hisses. Jiro tells her that it is Kurogane's doing and she taunts him about how much influence Kurogane has over him. She threatens him that if he does not have Sué killed soon, he will never see her again, storming out of the room.
The scene shifts and we see Sué and Tsurumaru running away from the castle, when Tsurumaru tells her that he forgot his flute. She tells him that they have no time to retrieve it, and they continue on their way. An attendant warns them that they have to keep going, since Kurogane is pursuing them, and goes back to retrieve the flute, telling Sué and Tsurumaru to go to the castle ruins to pray for the dead.
We see Ichimonji and Kyoami wandering around the castle ruins. "Heaven and earth are upside down," Kyoami says, "I was to make him laugh, when I was the jester. Now he's become the jester and makes me laugh." Kyoami tells a story about a snake egg, as Ichimonji asks where he is, and calls for Saburo. Ichimonji seems to come to for a second, but cannot recognize Kyoami.
We see Jiro's soldiers bathing in a river, when Saburo's soldiers approach, seeking vengeance.
Meanwhile, Jiro's men alert him to the fact that Saburo's army is headed towards them, along with the armies of Ayabe and Fujimaki. Another advisor enters and says that Saburo is looking for his father, and will leave when he finds him.
The scene shifts to Saburo, who worries that the help of Fujimaki and Ayabe's armies could lead to war. Fujimaki acknowledges to Ayabe that he acted hastily and Saburo will not be pleased, but Ayabe says that they should just stay put, so as not to start a war.
Jiro's army assembles for battle, even though Kurogane advises him to simply send Saburo a message that he can have Ichimonji, thereby avoiding a senseless war. Jiro is convinced, however, that if he hands over Ichimonji, Saburo will attack and accuse him of committing treason. Kurogane insists that they cannot go to war, when a messenger tells Jiro that Kaede is beckoning him to "celebrate his departure for war." His advisors urge him not to, but Jiro goes to Kaede.
Kaede urges Jiro to go to war, even though Kurogane has advised him against it. Kaede teases Jiro and tells him to send an assassin to kill Saburo.
The scene shifts to Kyoami and Ichimonji. When Kyoami glibly tells Ichimonji to jump off a cliff, Ichimonji actually does so, and Kyoami runs to help him on the ridge below. Suddenly, they see Sué on a cliff above them, and Ichimonji immediately recognizes the place where they are standing as the castle of Sué's father, which he destroyed. He suddenly spots Tsurumaru and believes he is in hell, running away towards a volcanic plain.
Analysis
Saburo's initial proclamation that Ichimonji's rule of war and bloodshed has created a political landscape in which no one is to be trusted proves to be very true. Indeed, nearly every character is an antagonist in some ways, prone to betrayal, deception, or violence. Jiro seems remorseless in his assumption of power and the murder of his brother, while Taro's widow, Kaede, seems to feel nothing about the loss of her husband and immediately turns to blackmail, seduction, and plotting the murder of Sué as a way of securing her own power in court.
Kyoami, Ichimonji's fool, often has a moral clarity that other characters do not have. Androgynous and ridiculous, his position in the margins of society affords him a certain amount of understanding about the events occurring around him, and he proves much wiser than one might expect. His talent comes from being able to pick out the ironies in any given scenario, as when he and Ichimonji sit in the field of flowers and he notes that it is ironic that Ichimonji is seeking refuge in a castle he destroyed. He is aligned with the fallen warlord, but he also sees the old man's sins with striking clarity.
This moral clarity gives Kyoami a sense of loyalty that many of the other characters lack. While he is tempted to leave Ichimonji in the night and set out on his own, he has doubts and decides to stay in the ruins of the castle with the warlord to whom he has been a nursemaid since he was a child. Kyoami may be slippery and inconsistent in his performance of self, but he also exhibits a striking loyalty to the mad king.
Saburo is the only peace-loving son of Ichimonji, yet his efforts to retrieve his father end up looking a lot like a declaration of war. When Fujimaki and Ayabe's men join forces to infringe on Jiro's territory, they send a message to Jiro that Saburo is looking to usurp the throne, even though his only aim is to rescue his old and ailing father. Since the beginning, Saburo has spoken out against the dangers of war and all the trauma it creates, yet he now finds himself on the front lines quite by accident.
The latter half of the film shows Ichimonji, who has been so sure of his actions, feeling regret and shame for perhaps the first time in his life, and wandering through the ruins of his past in a state of madness. He becomes a marginal figure, much like his companion Kyoami, wandering through a liminal consciousness, only half aware of where or who he is. As such, he is somewhat outside of time, wandering through a world of vengeance and bloodshed that he created.
