How Kiyoshi Kurosawa Turned a Samurai Whodunit Into a Chilling Story About Belief with ‘The Samurai and the Prisoner

Kurosawa adapts Honobu Yonezawa's book, "Kokurojo: The Samurai and the Prisoner," to tell the story of Lord Murashige Araki (Motoki Masahiro), a samurai warlord who has rebelled against a rival warlord, Nobunaga Oda. While dealing with an impending counterattack from Oda, Murashige finds that trouble stirs in his own courts as mysterious deaths, from a child prisoner to other officials, end up mysteriously murdered. Murashige forms an uneasy alliance with the prisoner Kanbei Kuroda (Suda Masaki), a war strategist of a rival clan who was spared by Murashige, to help solve the murders. Related Stories Greg Longstreet Celebrates Cinema — And His Show Business Family's Legacy — with His Indie Film Zine 'Ritual' 'I Want Your Sex' Review: Gregg Araki Begs Gen Z to Be Horny and Vulnerable with Each Other in a Fun but Stilted Return to Form

For "The Samurai and the Prisoner," Kurosawa mixes whodunit tropes with jidaigeki ones (think: "Katanas Out" or "Wake Up Beheaded Man"), until the mystery transforms into a treatise on weaponized religion, and how those in power can exploit people's fears about what comes after death, which makes them more pliable to be used as agents of state violence. If followers are the highest currency — an endless supply of bodies to burn through — then there's nothing more powerful than a group ready to throw everything in this life away for the next, to fasten their flesh into sacrifices.

When I met with Kurosawa at the JW Marriott during Cannes, he evoked the very spirit of Murashige: calm, calculated, and focused, seemingly not letting the film's rapturous response (or any past victories) get to his head. We discussed his approach to depicting violence, the role of mystery, the afterlife, and faith in his work, and what made him want to tackle a story set in this time period, with all of its logistical challenges but anachronistic joys.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length; it was conducted via translator.

IndieWire: It was touching to see Ryusuke Hamaguchi , Hirokazu Koreeda , and Kōji Fukada all at the premiere. What did it mean to connect former students, colleagues, collaborators at the festival?

Kiyoshi Kurosawa : Seeing them made me realize how special film festivals are. I used to see Hamaguchi and Fukada quite often, but I don't get to see them as much these days. All of us, director Koreeda included, are doing our own work and making each of our films in our own ways, so it's nice when I find myself in these situations where I get to re-encounter and see them after some time. It's quite special and wouldn't be possible without film festivals.

You are all samurai of cinema in your own right, but that makes the reunion sweeter.

[Laughs] You have to be careful with this analogy because then we might start fighting.

Your producer recommended the novel "Kokurojo: The Samurai and the Prisoner" from Honobu Yonezawa for you to read. Why did you want to adapt it?

Even before I was given the book, I was already interested in the historical figure, Araki Murashige, who is a 16th-century figure who used to be a vassal to Nobunaga Oda and then, of course, betrayed him and then also stayed in this castle and is surrounded by Oda's army. After that, a few months later, he leaves behind his own people and escapes, and he's actually known quite well as this person who acted very un-samurai-like and cowardly. He's almost seen as a bad guy in history.

I was always curious as to why he was compelled to first betray Oda, but then also why he decided to run away. That's always been a historical mystery. I was really interested in this particular figure who sort of stepped away from social standards of the time to run away. I've had my own speculation, and once I read this book–though it was fictitious — it explored questions that I had, which is why I wanted to turn it into a film.

Mystery and the fear of the unknown are themes that characterize your work. There's a built-in mystery with this plot, in that, as you articulated, we don't know why Murashige walked out of the castle.

As interesting as I found the book, I realized that it was also difficult to adapt. I'm not talking about the mystery of why Murashige decided to leave the castle, but more so the structure of the story. In the story, Murashige acts almost as a detective in solving the murder mysteries that are happening in the castle, as if he's like Sherlock Holmes. That can be a difficult structure to undertake in a film, because the "mystery" is something that happened in the past. When you're reading an entertaining book, but when you rewind time in film, that can be tedious.

It's different from if I'm working in a thriller or horror genre where the mystery is something that happens in the future, or you're headed towards the unknown. For example, you can go into a mansion, and you don't know what's going to happen, but that's something that's happening in the future and that creates a powerful energy within the film. Yet when that mystery is happening in the past, going back to the past can stop the propelling movement forward for the film. On a script level, I had to think about this issue.

What I then decided to do was to not go back in time at all within the story and instead have the mystery solving happening through the dialogue. By depicting details from this process by showing Kuroda giving Murashige clues, I figured that I could also express the change that happens within Murashige himself. By depicting the "why" of Murashige in parallel with how his relationships are shifting, I figured that might speak to the mystery.

In the middle of the film, you take time to show Araki Murashige preparing tea. There's an invitation to stillness and contemplation, and I'd love to hear why you chose to include that scene and the importance of showing the whole process of making tea.

For Sengoku-period samurai, the tea ceremony was not just about enjoying tea. It...

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