Wada and Kurosawa, and were handmade by master tailors over more than two years. The film also used 200 horses. Kurosawa loved filming in lush and expansive locations, and most of Ran was shot amidst the mountains and plains of Mount Aso, Japan's largest active volcano. Kurosawa was granted permission to shoot at two of the country's most famous landmarks, the ancient castles at Kumamoto and Himeji. For the castle of Lady Sue's family, he used the ruins of the custom-constructed Azusa castle, made by Kurosawa's production crew near Mount Fuji. Hidetora's third castle, which was burned to the ground, was a real building which Kurosawa built on the slopes of Mount Fuji. No miniatures were used for that segment, and Tatsuya Nakadai had to do the scene where Hidetora flees the castle in one take. Kurosawa also filmed a scene that required an entire field to be sprayed gold, but cut it out of the final film during editing. The documentary A.K. shows the filming of the scene. Kurosawa often shot scenes with three cameras simultaneously, each using different lenses and angles. Many long-shots were employed and very few close-ups. On several occasions, Kurosawa used static cameras and suddenly brought the action into frame, rather than using the camera to track the action. He also used jump cuts to progress certain scenes, changing the pace of the action for filmic effect. Akira Kurosawa's wife of 39 years, Yōko Yaguchi, died during the production of the film. He halted filming for one day to mourn before resuming work. His regular recording engineer Fumio Yanoguchi also died late in production in January 1985. Crew Akira Kurosawa – director, co-writer Ishirō Honda – associate director Kunio Nozaki – assistant director Ichiro Yamamoto – assistant director Okihiro Yoneda – assistant director Teruyo Nogami – production manager Takeji Sano – lighting Yoshiro Muraki – production design Shinobu Muraki – production design Emi Wada – costume design Ichiro Minawa – sound effects Personnel taken from The Criterion Collection. Development Kurosawa conceived of the idea that became Ran in the mid-1970s, when he read a parable about the Sengoku-period warlord Mōri Motonari. Motonari was famous for having three sons, all incredibly loyal and talented. Kurosawa began imagining what would have happened had they been bad. Although the film eventually became heavily inspired by Shakespeare's play King Lear, Kurosawa became aware of the play only after he