Tahei (Minoru Chiaki) and Matashichi (Kamatari Fujiwara) are poor peasants in feudal Japan; they left home thinking they could make their fortune by joining the Yamana army in its war against the Akizuki clan. Didn’t happen. They arrived after the Akizuki had fallen and instead got shanghaied into digging graves. Now they’re trudging back home to Hawakawa, carping at each other incessantly about their bad fortune and their graveyard stench. After becoming separated and reunited, they manage to steal some rice and a pot and try again to get back home.
Now it gets interesting. They discover a gold bar bearing an Akizuki imprint hidden within a piece of their firewood. Before they can find more, a burly guy shows up to crash their meal. They wind up sharing their pragmatic scheme for getting back home to Hayakawa. They’ll actually venture into Yamana territory to do an end-around in order to pass through the more lightly guarded border with Hayakawa. The stranger’s impressed. He makes these two gullible peasants an offer they can’t refuse: he’ll lead them to the hidden Azizuki fortress where the rest of the gold is hidden. He’ll give them a share if they help carry the gold and see him safely to Hayakawa. They’re in: Deal!
As they head out on the journey, we learn – but our two peasants don’t – that he’s a legendary Akizuki general, Rokurota Makabe (Toshiro Mifune). His goal is to shepherd the gold and Akizuki princess Yuki (Misa Uehara) to friendly territory in Hayakawa so she begin rebuilding their clan. He presents Yuki to them as a deaf mute because her regal air and speech would betray her.
Thus director Akira Kurasawa takes us on a series of adventures and misadventures as this very, very unlikely cohort tries to slip two hundred gold-bearing sticks of wood and a testy princess through territory heavily traveled by Yamana soldiers. Halfway through they add a fifth traveler, an Akizuki peasant girl whom Yuki insists they save from a brothel owner.
Makabe knows that he can trust his two confederates’ greed to keep them motivated, but perhaps he misjudges their cowardice. The pair routinely try to double-cross or abandon them whenever the opportunity, or danger, suggests. Sometimes their antics lead to near disaster; other times, they provide a lucky break that gets them closer to their destination. They are so relentlessly unreliable and annoying that you have trouble really rooting for these bumbling buffoons. And yet … you do.
See It
Although Mifune and Uehara get top billing, it’s Kamatari Fujiwara and Minoru Chiaki who deserve star status here, claiming the lion’s share of the onscreen time. Fujiwara’s Matashichi is an incessant complainer. Chiaki’s Tahei is driven by greed even to the extent of self-destruction. The screenplay gives them distinct, and distinctively annoying, personas, and they are flawless in their performances. They are also both adroit physical performers. Example: In early scenes they must scramble up, and down, and up a dangerously steep hillside absolutely carpeted with baseball-sized rocks. It’s a potentially ankle-crushing task.
Mifune, the legendary Japanese actor and frequent Kurosawa collaborator, is exactly what you expect: the very personification of the duty-bound samurai. In every scene he’s a dominating presence.
The Hidden Fortress was Misa Uehara’s first role of a short career, and it shows. Princess Yuki was raised like a boy by a kingly father without a son. But the mannerisms meant to show her as being proud and assertive are too often robotic. But let’s give her a nod for her horsemanship.
Although The Hidden Fortress is obviously meant, foremost, to be an entertainment, Kurosawa does strew some commentary here and there. The lowly Tahei and Mataschichi may be peasants and greedy buffoons, but in the end they do no one any harm. You know Makabe is using them throughout, and initially he expresses no compunction about killing them until he recognizes their usefulness. Princess Yuki is his counterpoint, protesting against Makabe’s sacrifices that she herself would not have asked for. When she insists they free the woman from the brothel owner, Makabe warns her, “Your kindness will be your downfall.” When they get drawn reluctantly into a Yamani festival, the princess is struck by the song being sung:
The life of man, burn it in the fire.
The life of an insect, throw it into the fire.
Yeah! When you realize the world is dark,
Life is just a dream. Lose yourself. Yeah!
Still (minor spoiler), the Hollywood ending reveals that Kurosawa’s intention is to make The Hidden Fortress a rousing adventure tale, not a deep treatise on the comparative virtues and vices of the royal versus the peasant classes.
I’ve read that The Hidden Fortress influenced George Lucas. Indeed, you can see R2D2 and 3CPO in Tahei and Matashichi, and Princess Leia in Princess Yuki. But I was reminded most of Roman Holiday, five years earlier. Waif-like Yuki is on an adventure with dashing Makabe (Yuki remarks on his good looks several times). Toward the end she confesses she’s loved traveling incognito, which allowed her to experience the world as she never would have been able to within the confines of her royal quarters.
The Hidden Fortress has some faults, most notably the way the length is padded with a few too many misadventures and especially just a few too many minutes of Tahei’s and Matashichi’s whining. Still, the gripping adventures outweigh the occasional slow patches, and you’ll be rewarded seeing it through to its not very surprising end.