Romantic

Character Role Analysis

Shino

And yet again, the women get short-changed in this film, limited basically to a few nameless farmers, Rikichi's doomed wife, and Shino: the pretty farmer's daughter who catches Katsushiro's eye. Frankly, she doesn't have much of a personality. She's passive and nice to look at and does great at making eyes at Katsushiro, but beyond that, she's got nothing.

Her romance exists more on a conceptual level than an actual boy-meets-girl one. She's a peasant. He's a samurai. And that means getting together is a great-big no-no. Kurosawa uses their fling to demonstrate how strong the binds of class remain, and that people get hurt when they cross it. Her presence in the story lays down a nice little Romeo and Juliet vibe that ties into the large conceptual thing rather nicely.

Beyond that, though, Shino just doesn't get too much attention. There's a lot of characters running around this movie and the world hadn't yet become hip enough to view women as anything other than a love interest. Poor Shino ends up paying the price for that.

(Anyone interested in seeing a more forceful and dynamic heroine in a Kurosawa film should check out Misa Uehara in The Hidden Fortress: a role that served as the inspiration for Princess Leia. (source)