The film Throne of Blood, directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1961, is based on Shakespeare's play Macbeth. The film is set in medieval Japan, while the play Macbeth is set in medieval Scotland. The location is not the only difference between the two productions. The portrayal of the characters is also very different; this is evident in Act 5, Scene 1. In this pivotal scene Lady Macbeth and Lady Asaji are seen cleansing their hands. While the two scenes share similarities, Shakespeare's depiction and Kurosawa's interpretation of the hand-washing scene are quite different: Lady Asaji appears to be without remorse while Lady Macbeth is filled with regret.
             As Lady Macbeth attempts to wash the blood from her hands she bellows: "Out, damned spot! Out, I say" (5.1.28)! There are a few ways that we can view this. We may regard Lady Macbeth as an evil person suffering from a guilty conscience. Lady Macbeth's prior encouragement of her husband to kill and betray in order to gain power has come back to haunt her. The bloodstained hands that Lady Macbeth attempts to scrub are not stained with blood at all. The blood she thinks she sees is all in her head, and could very well symbolize guilt. Living with her guilt all over her hands proves to be the best punishment because it is through this suffering that her once aggressive and bloodthirsty nature reveals the small, delicate woman she really is. Through this form of punishment, Lady Macbeth realizes that she is not a strong person and she then kills herself. William Carroll editor of Macbeth: Texts and Contexts recaps that: "When Lady Macbeth is strong, Macbeth is weak (as at the beginning of the murder plot), and when Macbeth is strong, Lady Macbeth becomes weak (as at the end of the play) (17). This idea could also be explained by the fact that at the beginning of the play Lady Macbeth was a more bold character, at the end when she became guilty, her boldness f...