Why it's wrong that I want this outfit

[gurdymonkey]

Screenshot of Mieko Harada as Kaede, from Kurosawa's Ran. http://www.kurosawamovies.com/gallery/main.php

Well, for one thing, Kaede is the Goneril character in Kurosawa's adaptation of the King Lear story to feudal Japan. I'm not all sweetness and light, but she's way meaner than I am. 

For another, see the triangles all over her kosode? That's a serpent scale motif, traditionally used in Noh costumes worn by the Hannya, a woman who is turned into a demon by her own jealousy.
https://eee.uci.edu/clients/sbklein/images/NOH/nohmasks/pages/surihaku.htm shows two examples of snake scale Noh robes.

Lastly, she dies in it.

It's still freaking gorgeous though.

Comments

[karisu-sama.livejournal.com]

See, all this cool cultural reference stuff that went completely past me when I saw this movie eons ago as a teenager... :D

Yeah, she's nasty, but she has a valid motive. I can't blame her too much.

And the "arrow bundle example" is a rip-off from Genghis Khan, I believe.

[bronx-baroness.livejournal.com]

Can you explain the "arrow bundle" being a rip off from Genghis- or point me to a book so that I can get it?

[karisu-sama.livejournal.com]

It's a classic story from "The Secret History of the Mongols" (the oldest surviving Mongolian-language literary work, written some time after the Khan's death in 1227 CE). Supposedly the lesson is given by a quasi-mythical ancestress of Genghis Khan, and late referred to by Hoelun, Genghis's mother, or Genghis Khan himself.

One on-line reference:
http://www.mongolia-attractions.com/genghis-khan2.html:

The Secret History of the Mongols gives several examples of women making key decisions, telling Genghis Khan how to live and what to do. For example, according to the legend, Genghis Khan’s ancestress, Alan Ho’a, had five sons who were constantly fighting with each other. One day she gathered them around the hearth fire and gave them each an arrow. She told them to break it, which they did with ease. Then she tied five arrows together and told them to break the bundle. None of them could. She then told her sons, “Brothers who work separately, like a single arrow shaft, can be easily broken, but brothers who stand together against the world, like a bundle of arrows, cannot be broken."

On-line reference about Alan Q'oa (also mentions the story):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Goa