Akira Kurosawa's wife of 39 years, Yôko Yaguchi, died during the production of this film. Kurosawa halted filming for just one day to mourn before resuming work on the picture.
Akira Kurosawa began writing the film 10 years before its release and said that it wasn't originally meant to be based on Shakespeare's "King Lear" but came to that during the writing process.
Akira Kurosawa referred to his previous film, Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980), as a "dress rehearsal" for this film. He spent ten years storyboarding every shot in the film as paintings. The resulting collection of images was published with the screenplay.
Several hundred costumes were all created by hand, a process taking two years to complete.
"Ran," generally translated from the Japanese, means "chaos" or "revolt."
Akira Kurosawa: [weather] The sky gradually becomes more and more cloudy as the plot progresses. It finally culminates after the first half, when heavy gusts of wind appear.
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