cavalry and drive off his infantry by engaging them from the woods, where the cavalry are unable to venture. Similarly, Taro and Saburo's assassination by a sniper also shows how individual heroes can be easily disposed of on a modern battlefield. Kurosawa also illustrates this new warfare with his camera. Instead of focusing on the warring armies, he frequently sets the focal plane beyond the action, so that in the film they appear as abstract entities. Casting The description of Hidetora in the first script was originally based on Toshiro Mifune. However, the role was cast to Tatsuya Nakadai, an actor who had played several supporting and major characters in previous Kurosawa films, such as Shingen and his double in Kagemusha. Other Kurosawa veterans in Ran were Masayuki Yui (Tango), Jinpachi Nezu (Jiro) and Daisuke Ryu (Saburo), all of whom were in Kagemusha. For Akira Terao (Taro) and Mieko Harada (Lady Kaede), Ran was their first Kurosawa film, but they would go on to work with him again in Dreams. Hisashi Igawa (Kurogane), who had previously been in Kurosawa's Dodes'ka-den, would reappear in both Dreams and Rhapsody in August. Kurosawa also hired two popular entertainers for supporting roles: singer-dancer Shinnosuke "Peter" Ikehata as Hidetora's loyal fool Kyoami and comedian-musician Hitoshi Ueki as rival warlord Nobuhiro Fujimaki. About 1,400 extras were employed. Acting style While most of the characters in Ran are portrayed by conventional acting techniques, two performances are reminiscent of Japanese Noh theatre. Noh is a form of Japanese traditional theatre requiring highly-trained actors and musicians where emotions are primarily conveyed by stylized conventional gestures. The heavy, ghost-like make-up worn by Tatsuya Nakadai's character, Hidetora, resembles the emotive masks worn by traditional Noh performers. The body language exhibited by the same character is also typical of Noh theatre: long periods of static motion and silence, followed by an abrupt, sometimes violent, change in stance. The character of Lady Kaede is also Noh-influenced. The Noh treatment emphasizes the ruthless, passionate, and single-minded natures of these two characters. Music Craig Lysy, writing for Movie Music UK, commented on the strengths of the film soundtrack's composer for Kurosawa's purposes: "Tōru Takemitsu was Japan's preeminent film score composer and Kurosawa secured his involvement in 1976, during the project's early stages. Their initial conception of the score was to use tategoe, a "shrill-voice" chant style without instrumentation. Over the intervening years, Kurosawa's conception of