It is set in the Sengoku period of Japanese history and tells the story of a lower-class petty thief who is taught to impersonate the dying daimyō Takeda Shingen to dissuade opposing lords from attacking the newly vulnerable clan.

Later, while the Takeda army lays siege to a castle belonging to Tokugawa Ieyasu, Shingen is shot while listening to a flute playing in the enemy camp.

The Takeda clan preserves the deception by announcing that they were simply making an offering of sake to the god of the lake, and the spies are ultimately convinced by the thief's performance.

However, Shingen's son Katsuyori is incensed by his father's decree of the three year subterfuge, which delays his inheritance and leadership of the clan.

In 1573, Nobunaga mobilizes his forces to attack Azai Nagamasa, continuing his campaign in central Honshu to maintain his control of Kyoto against the growing opposition.

When those who rush to help him see that he does not have Shingen's battle scars, he is revealed as an impostor, and is driven out in disgrace, allowing Katsuyori to take over the clan.

George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola are credited at the end of the film as executive producers in the international version.

It is unclear whether Katsu was fired or left of his own accord, but he was replaced by Tatsuya Nakadai, a well-known actor who had appeared in a number of Kurosawa's previous films.

However, the scene in which he plays a servant who accompanies a Catholic missionary and doctor to a meeting with Shingen was cut from the foreign release of the film.

[2] Kagemusha was the number one Japanese film on the domestic market in 1980, earning ¥2.7 billion in distribution rental income.

[16] Kagemusha won numerous honours in Japan and abroad, marking the beginning of Kurosawa's most successful decade in international awards, the 1980s.

[18] At the 53rd Academy Awards, Kagemusha was nominated for Best Art Direction (Yoshirō Muraki) and Best Foreign Language Film.

[19][20] In 2016, The Hollywood Reporter ranked the film 10th among 69 counted winners of the Palme d'Or to date, concluding "Set against the wars of 16th-century Japan, Kurosawa's majestic samurai epic is still awe-inspiring, not only in its historical pageantry, but for imagery that communicates complex ideas about reality, belief and meaning.