Essay | Shakespeare's Macbeth and Kurosawa's Throne of Blood

Throne of Blood, the 1957 filmed translation of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, was made in Japan, written in Japanese by Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosowa and Hideo Oguni and directed by Akira Kurosawa. It has many times been called an adaptation of Macbeth, however it is not. As storytellers have done since time began, Kurosawa took a story and made it his own: translating a play text into another medium; a separate setting; a differing culture in a completely different style and for a completely contrasting audience.

The film wasn't even intended to be an adaptation of Macbeth. When composing Throne of Blood, the writing team involved did not even consult Shakespeare's script, as Stuart Galbraith details in his book, The Emperor and the wolf.

Kurosawa and co-writers Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Ryuzo Kikushima didn't bother to...
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