Original Australian Daybill movie poster.Kagemusha is a 1980 film by Akira Kurosawa. In Japanese, kagemusha (lit. "shadow warrior") is a term used to denote a political decoy. It is set in the Sengoku period of Japanese history and tells the story of a lower-class criminal who is taught to impersonate a dying daimyo in order to dissuade opposing lords from attacking the newly vulnerable clan. The daimyo is based on Takeda Shingen, and the film ends with the climactic 1575 Battle of Nagashino. George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola are credited at the end of the film as executive producers in the international version. This is because they convinced 20th Century Fox to make up a shortfall in the film's budget when the original producers, Toho Studios, could not afford to complete the film. In return, 20th Century Fox received the international distribution rights to the film. According to Lucas, Kurosawa used 5000 extras for the final battle sequence, filming for a whole day, then he cut it down to 90 seconds in the final release. Many beautiful special effects, and a number of scenes that filled holes in the story, landed on the "cutting-room floor."
