The Wild Boar (Symbol)
In Japanese culture, the wild boar symbolizes fight, aggression and an attacking spirit. Ichimonji has been a brave warlord throughout his life, but now he is approaching the end of his life, and must come to terms with his aging. In the first scene of the film, his subjects discuss the fact that he killed a wild boar, but he insists that the boar is too old to be cooked and eaten. In this moment, the boar is a symbol for Ichimonji's own aging, the fact that he has reached a crossroads in his royal and military career, and must find a way to age and die in peace, rather than get conquered and cooked by his avaricious sons.
3 Arrows (Symbol)
Ichimonji attempts to teach his sons that if they stand together they cannot be broken. He has them break a single arrow and then try to break a bundle of three. In this moment, Ichimonji turns the arrows into a symbol for unity and working together. However, Saburo breaks the bundle over his knee, a symbolic act to signify that he thinks that his brothers are completely incapable of unity and are not to be trusted.
Clouds and Sun (Motif)
Throughout the film, scenes of human activity and drama are subdivided by beautiful shots of the natural world and the sky, particularly large cloud formations and the sun. This imagery evokes thoughts of heaven, the fact that Ichimonji is at the end of his life, but also represents the power of nature over man. While the human characters in the film get into petty power struggles and horrible acts of betrayal, nature remains a constant, and the majesty of the clouds and sun form a curious backdrop to the horrors and atrocities that the characters must face.
The Fox Head (Symbol)
When Kurogane is contracted to kill Sué and bring back her head, he brings back the stone head of a fox instead. He tells Jiro and Kaede that foxes can turn themselves into humans in order to deceive men, turning the head statue into a symbol for the ways that Kaede is manipulating and deceiving Jiro.
The Film itself as Allegory for Technological Advancement
While this allegory is not explicit in the narrative and content of the film, many have interpreted the story of Ichimonji's kingdom as an allegory for technological advancement and its violent implications. In an article for The Criterion Collection, Michael Wilmington writes, "The secret subject of Ran—as Kurosawa explained to me in a 1985 interview—is the threat of nuclear apocalypse. The film is saturated with the anxiety of the post-Hiroshima age." The film depicts a leader whose own authority is undermined by the violence and the technological advancement in tools of warfare that he has brought into the world.
