Spies working for Tokugawa and his ally Oda witness the disposal of the jar and, suspecting that Shingen has died, go to report the death. Later, the Takeda leaders secretly drop the jar with Shingen's corpse into Lake Suwa. The generals then decide they cannot trust the thief and set him free. At first, even the thief is unaware of Shingen's death, until he tries to break into a huge jar, believing it to contain treasure, and instead finds Shingen's preserved corpse. Nobukado presents the thief to Shingen's generals, proposing to have this kagemusha impersonate Shingen full-time. Meanwhile, Shingen's rivals Oda Nobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Uesugi Kenshin each contemplate the consequences of Shingen's withdrawal of his army still not knowing of his death. Shingen soon dies with only a small group of witnesses. Mortally wounded, he orders a withdrawal and commands his generals to keep his death a secret for three years. One evening when Shingen visits the battlefield he is shot by a sniper who has mapped Shingen's previous movements in the camp. Later, Shingen's army has besieged a castle of Tokugawa Ieyasu. The brothers then agree that he would prove useful as a double, and they decide to use the thief as a kagemusha, a political decoy. In Japan's Sengoku period, Takeda Shingen, daimyō of the Takeda clan, meets with his brother Nobukado, and an unnamed thief whom the latter met by chance and spared from crucifixion due to the thief's uncanny resemblance to Shingen.

What does kage mean