Kagemusha is a 1980 film directed by Akira Kurosawa. In Japanese, kagemusha (which means ‘shadow warrior’) is a term used to denote a political decoy. The film tells the story of a lower-class criminal who is hired to impersonate a dying daimyō (samurai lord) to whom he bears a striking resemblance. When the daimyō dies the kagemusha has to take up arms in his place, the story culminating in the climactic 1575 Battle of Nagashino. Leading Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai played both the daimyō, Takeda Shingen, and the Kagemusha. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The British Film Institute (BFI) acquired its costume collection for display at the Museum of the Moving Image, which existed on the South Bank in London between 1988 and 1999. The collection is made up of British, European, American and Japanese films and covers the period from the silent film era to the mid-1990s. It contains a wealth of historic and significant film costumes worn by major performers and designed by some of the 20th century’s most important film costume designers. The collection was transferred to the V&A in 2015.