Tag: 1960s

Tough Guy (悪名, Tokuzo Tanaka, 1961)

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Starring a baby-faced Shintaro Katsu, Tokuzo Tanaka’s adaptation of a popular novel by Toko Kon, Tough Guy (悪名, Akumyo), went on to spawn a 17-film “Akumyo” or “Bad Reputation” series. Asakichi (Shintaro Katsu) is certainly the “tough guy” of the title and fulfilling a certain vision of post-war masculinity in this early Showa tale, yet getting a “bad reputation” is something he ultimately rejects in the film’s closing moments as he continues to straddle a line, not quite the “yakuza” he claims to hate but a noble rogue all the same. 

Asakichi is a small-town boy from rural Kawauchi. Despite the nobility which later comes to define his character, he’s disowned by his family after stealing a chicken from a yakuza-affiliated farmer to use in a cock fight. Originally, he skips town, with the farmer’s apparently married sister Kiyo who tells him that she’s pregnant though is probably not telling the truth. In any case, when they get to the next town he discovers she’s been engaging in sex work and breaks up with her, but Kiyo is only one element of his increasingly complicated love life. While staying in the town, Asakichi ends up developing a relationship with besotted former geisha Kotoito (Yaeko Mizutani) whom he eventually agrees to help rescue through another elopement. Meanwhile, he also becomes a “guest” of the local Yoshioka yakuza group and sworn brother of former enemy Sada.(Jiro Tamiya). 

The problem is that the Yoshioka gang is small potatoes in the town and does not have the resources to stand up against the hired thugs of the Matsushima red light district who eventually turn up to reclaim Kotoito. While she manages to escape on her own, Asakichi ends up randomly marrying a completely different woman, Okinu (Tamao Nakamura), who cannily makes him sign a contract saying they’re married before she’ll sleep with him. Nevertheless, when he hears that Kotoito came back to look for him and was recaptured, he springs into action and heads to Innoshima to battle agains the Silk Hat Boss and a wily yet fair-minded female yakuza who turns out to be the one really in charge of the island. 

Asakichi is, in many ways, an embodiment of a certain kind of masculinity in his determination to do what he sees as right even when others don’t agree with him. Consequently, his moral code seems inconsistent and difficult to define. He was fine with stealing the chicken, but doesn’t like the idea of cheating at gambling (though later does it to get money to rescue Kotoito) despite proving himself an expert at bluff and trickery. Similarly, he hates “yakuza” and refuses to become one, but is willing to stay as their “guest” and to help out when they need extra bodies for a fight. The only thing that certain is that he hates those who abuse their power to oppress the weak, which explains his objection to the yakuza, while otherwise doing what they claim to do but in reality do not in defending the interests of those who cannot defend themselves such as Kotoito who has been sold into the sex trade by a feckless father. 

Her position is mirrored in that of the female gang boss, Ito (Chieko Naniwa) , who eventually assumes control over Kotoito’s fate, an ice-cold and fearless leader who nevertheless respects Asakichi’s earnestness and brands him the tough guy of the title after he decides to return alone and accept punishment for freeing Kotoito. In giving them a week’s grace to have a kind of non-honeymoon (on which Okinu actually also comes along), she may not have expected the pair to return and is surprised that Asakichi insists on bringing the matter to a formal close. Eventually he defeats her by refusing to give in, insisting that they see which is stronger, his body or her cane, rather than begging for mercy and thereby accepting her authority. Having defeated her, he breaks the cane in two and throws it in the ocean to stand by his strength alone while crying out that he has won, yet suggesting that he does not want the kind of life that leads to a “bad reputation”. Tanaka makes fantastic use of lighting not least in the final shot of the shining sea that leaves Asakichi alone on the shore, a tiny figure in an expanding landscape.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Shinobi no mono 8: The Three Enemies (新書・忍びの者, Kazuo Ikehiro, 1966)

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The abiding constant of the Shinobi Mono series had been its continual forward motion, at least up until instalment seven which had backtracked to the death of Ieyasu. This eighth and final film (save for a further sequel released in 1970 starring Hiroki Matsukata replacing Raizo Ichikawa who had sadly passed away a couple of years earlier at the young age of 37) however reaches even further back into the mists of time setting itself a few years before the original trilogy had begun.

This time around, we follow young Kojiro (Raizo Ichikawa) on what is a more stereotypical tale of personal revenge albeit that one that eventually becomes embroiled in politics as he joins a ninja band that’s working for Takeda Shingen (Kenjiro Ishiyama). In slightly surprising turn of events, Ieyasu (Taketoshi Naito) turns out to be what passes for a good guy at least in contrast to Shingen’s duplicity though Ieyasu himself is still young and at the very beginning of his military career which is why unlike his older self he’s a little more proactive and willing to start a fight as well as finish one. In any case, Shingen thinks he’s an easy target largely because he simply hasn’t been in post long enough to have begun making connections with local lords, bribing them with gifts to secure their loyalty. 

In any case, Kojiro’s journey begins as something more like a martial arts film as he surpasses his current teacher and is told to find a man called Sadayu (Yunosuke Ito) in the mountains if wants to be up to gaining his revenge against the three men who killed his father while trying to steal his gunpowder. Perhaps there’s something a little ironic in the fact that Kojiro’s father was killed in a fight over what amounts to the substance of the future engineering a wholesale change in samurai warfare and edging towards the oppressive peace of the Tokugawa shogunate. But to get she revenge, Kojiro commits himself to learning true ninjutsu as the film demonstrates in a lengthy training montage. Unlike previous instalments, however, there is left emphasis place on the prohibition of emotion with the reason Kojiro cannot romance Sandayu’s adopted daughter down to her father’s whim forbidding her from marrying a ninja.

Apparently not the Sandayu of the earlier films despite the similarity of the name, this one has decided to side with Shingen because he’s mistakenly concluded that he is a “fair person who understands us ninja” when in reality he just using them and is no better than Nobunaga or Ieyasu. Shingen hires them to tunnel into a castle through the well, but is entirely indifferent to their complaints about safety leaving a Sandayu voiwing vengeance. The ninja, he says, generally serve themselves and are bound to no master but he seems to have thought Shingen was different only to be proved wrong once again.

Of course, Kojiro continues looking for the men who killed his father though they obviously guide him back towards conflict anyway. When he tracks some of them down, one remarks that all he did was finish him off which was an act of kindness to end his suffering not that he necessary approved of what his fallow gang members had done. Kojiro finds a surrogate father in Sadayu much as Goemon had though this time a slightly better one even if Sandayu is also a man with a lot on his conscience. Even more so than the other films, this one takes place in a largely lawless land too consumed with perpetual warfare to notice the starving and the desperate let alone the inherent corruption of the feudal era. The bad of ninjas has a rather scrappy quality, not quite as sleek as the Iga of previous films while also a little naive. Shooting more like a standard jidaigeki, Ikehiro uses relatively few ninja tricks generally sticking to smoke and blow tarts with a few shrunken battles. Nevertheless, the violence itself is surprisingly visceral beginning with unexpected severing of an arm and leading to a man getting stabbed in both eyes. Then again, the film ends in the characteristically upbeat way which has become somewhat familiar only this time Kojiro runs back towards romantic destiny now freed of his mission of vengeance and the oppressive ninja code. 

Shinobi no mono 7: Mist Saizo Strikes Back (忍びの者 新・霧隠才蔵, Kazuo Mori, 1966)

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After the initial trilogy, the Shinobi no Mono series has changed direction following instead another ronin, Saizo, opposed to the Tokugawa because the promised world of peace had no room for ninja. Nevertheless, as time moved on, the sixth instalment shifted again to follow Saizo’s son, Saisuke, who continued his father’s vendetta against the Tokugawa but largely found himself frustrated by the times in which he lived. Nevertheless, film seven picks back up with Saizo and takes place in 1616 shortly after the siege of Osaka. 

Having joined up with a band of other displaced ninja, it seems that Saizo (Raizo Ichikawa) has had the rather unusual charge of heart in that his experiences with Yukimura have apparently convinced him to devote himself to serving a lord rather than living wild and free as a ninja while he still has a burning desire to kill Ieyasu but mainly for personal revenge. This is partly in recognition that he’s realised the Tokugawa are here to stay and politically it won’t make any difference killing Ieyasu as one of his underlings will simply move up to take his place.

The other problem that he has is that there seems to be a mole and the other ninja have all settled on Akane (Shiho Fujimura) as the likely source of the treachery seeing as she is a “kunoichi” and therefore not a real ninja. Akane of course rejects this, but has also fallen in love with Saizo, which is of course against the ninja code. Saizo somewhat reinforces the sexist message by telling her to think of her pride and happiness as a woman, both things that a female ninja is expected to reject. Even so, he does not agree with his fellow ninja that she is the traitor and does not reject her affections in quite the way he usually does. Meanwhile, the gang is also in touch with another woman, Yayoi (Yuko Kusunoki), a maid to Lady Sen who also claims to be looking for revenge against the Tokugawa as her father was killed at Osaka Castle while her clan is also opposed to Ieyasu. 

Ever duplicitous, Ieyasu sends his own ninja against them. Led by Fuma Daijuro (Takahiro Tamura), the clan is apparently an ancient enemy of the Iga with whom they’ve long been waiting for a showdown only they don’t usually leave their home promise. The vendetta pushes the film back into regular jidaigeki tragedy, if one with a spy element as Saizo and the others try to figure out the identity of the mole while plotting to kill Ieyasu. The other ninja are somewhat blinded by their own preferences despite the prohibitions against human feeling though they do eventually admit their mistakes and apologise.

This one is perhaps a little nastier with the rival gang calling Akane a whore and threatening to rape her while the Tokugawa also admit they plan to tie up loose ends by knocking off the mole when they’re no one longer useful. Returning to the director’s chair, Kazuo Mori leans more towards a classic samurai aesthetic, but nevertheless stays close to the series’ nihilistic atmosphere which is perhaps deepened by the solidifying of the Tokugawa regime which makes the ninja’s existence more or less redundant. In a slightly meta motif, this film overlaps with the last of the original trilogy in which Goemon does in fact bring about Ieyasu’s death even if, as Ieyasu says, he was old and would have died soon anyway though now he now goes out at the top of his game having achieved all of his major life goals.

It does however adopt the slightly more fantastical trappings of the later films in its flaming shrunken and whirring fire whips not to mention the spear action from Fuma’s gang. The final showdown takes place amid copious snow echoing the coldness of the ninja lifestyle in which human emotions are largely forbidden while not even fellow ninja can really be trusted. Trusting only his mission, Saizo cuts a lonely figure and cannot seem to separate himself from it, running fast towards Edo and a confrontation with politics hoping to start a domino effect, resulting in the decline of the Tokugawa through a simple process of elimination.

Shinobi No Mono 6: The Last Iga Spy (忍びの者 伊賀屋敷, Kazuo Mori, 1965)

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Though there’s a clear divide between the first three films in the Shinobi no Mono series and those that followed, one thing that remained constant is that time passed. By the sixth instalment, we’re already in 1637 which is more than 50 years after the setting of the first film which began in 1575 at the tail end of the Warring States era. Hero of films four and five, Saizo had been desperate to return to the chaos of the pre-Seikgahara society in which the ninja could indeed hold sway though as he discovered the pax Tokugawa was definitely here to stay. 

Given that Saizo would now be an old man, the torch is passed to his son, Saisuke (Raizo Ichikawa), who like his father opposes the Tokugawa but also has a desire for revenge against the corrupt petty official who killed him during the battle of Shimabara which definitely sealed the Tokugawa victory. Ieyasu may be dead, but the regime has only become more oppressive while it seems there is still enough intrigue to provide work for the jobbing ninja only now it’s taking place largely within the palace in the de facto one party state of the feudal society. 

On the other hand, there is a degree of destabilisation and societal flux as the old class system struggles to adjust to a world of peace. The nation is filled with disenfranchised samurai and ronin who largely have no real options to support themselves other than becoming mercenaries or taking odd jobs from various lords in the hope of eventually being taken in as a permanent retainer. It’s these ronin that Saisuke, and the rebellion’s leader Yui Shosetsu (Mizuho Suzuki), hope to marshal in convincing them to rise up against Tokugawa oppression and regain at least a little of the freedom their immediate forebears enjoyed.

The evils of this system can be seen in an otherwise sympathetic lord’s insistence that his underling will have to take the blame and commit seppuku if his decision to help the rebels is discovered. As Saisuke later remarks, the era of human knowledge rather than weaponry is already here and battles are largely being fought over parlour games played in court. At this point, the shogun’s sudden demise leaving only an 11-year-old son has opened a power vacuum that allows unscrupulous lords, like Saisuke’s enemy Izu (Isao Yamagata), to exercise power vicariously. Izu has used it to enrich himself by exploiting desperate ronin and spending vast sums on personal projects, yet he proves himself a true politician in effortlessly covering up for the lord who tried to help the rebels doubtless knowing that he now has him in his pocket for life.

Seemingly returning to the low-key social principles of the first few films, Saisuke’s rebellion is also towards the inherently unfair system complaining that the battle for power is a monster that feeds on courage and will crush conscience like an insect. But as Izu says, times have changed and the struggle cannot be ended even if Saisuke argues that anything manmade can be dismantled. Saisuke has to admit that he’s been outplayed, the leader of the revolution also turns out to be corrupt, taking advantage of other people’s desperation and dissatisfaction to enrich himself while Izu’s plotting has left him largely blindfolded as a ninja clearly out of his depth in the new and confusing world of the Tokugawa hegemony. A powerful man is always looking for a victim, he reflects, perhaps echoing the plight of Goemon unwittingly manipulated by the duplicitous Sandayu while admittedly somewhat drunk on his own misplaced sense of self-confidence. 

Deviating a little from the realism of the series as a whole, the film shifts into more recognisably jidaigeki territory revolving around corrupt lords and an exploited populace even if in this case it’s the disenfranchised warrior class experiencing a moment of mass redundancy though apparently unwilling to resist. Peep holes behind noh masks add a note of quirky innovation to the backroom machinations of the Tokugawa regime while silent ninja battles and flaming shuriken add to the sense of noirish danger even as it becomes clear that the ninja is approaching a moment of eclipse, no longer quite necessary in a world of constant duplicity.  

Shinobi No Mono 5: Return of Mist Saizo (忍びの者 続・霧隠才蔵, Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964)

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At the end of the previous instalment, Saizo (Raizo Ichikawa) had escaped from the fall of Osaka Castle spiriting away Sanada Yukimura (Tomisaburo Wakayama) who, in contrast to what the history books say, did not die. The pair make their way towards Shimazu, where they are also not well disposed to Ieyasu (Eitaro Ozawa), but as Saizo is informed the Tokugawa clan will never die. Knocking off Nobunaga put an end to the Oda clan, getting rid of Hideyori took the Toyotomi out of the running, but killing Ieyasu will make little difference because another retainer will swiftly take his place.

As a reminder, that’s bad for Saizo because what he wanted was the chaos of the Warring States era back to restore the ninja to their previous status. Nevertheless, at the end of the previous film he claimed to have rediscovered a human heart in his devotion to Yukimura though it may of course be simply another ruse to meet an end. In any case, Ieyasu seems to be putting his ninjas to good use and is once again waiting it out apparently aware that Yukimura is alive and well in Shimazu.

Meanwhile, times are changing. Yukimura is convinced the future of warfare lies in firearms and whoever controls Tanegashima where the weapons are made will prove victorious. They think they can gain it by figuring out how they get access to high-quality iron when trading with anyone outside of Portugal is illegal and the Portuguese don’t have any. It’s access to foreign trade which is becoming a crunch issue as Ieyasu tries to solidify his power, later giving a deathbed order to ban Christianity to stop European merchants taking over the country. Saizo travels to Tanegashima to investigate and figures out that the secret is they’re trading with China, which is pretty good blackmail material, but also encounters two sisters who turn out to be the orphaned daughters of a Tokugawa ninja with vengeance on their mind.

In a surprising turn of events, it turns out that his main adversary is Hanzo Hattori (Saburo Date) but the fact he keeps outsmarting him eventually convinces Ieyasu that the ninja have outlived their usefulness. Hanzo becomes determined to kill Saizo to restore his honour, filling the palace with various ninja traps though unlike Goemon Saizo seems to be one step ahead of them. This lengthy final sequence is played in near total silence, and ironically finds Goemon just waiting, after dispatching several of Hanzo’s men, to see if his poison dart has taken effect and Ieyasu is on his way out. Only in the end Ieyasu just laughs at him. He’s 75. Saizo’s gone to too much effort when he could have just waited it out. Ieyasu has already achieved everything he wanted to. His control over Japan is secured given he’s just been appointed chancellor. He can quite literally die happy because nothing matters to him anymore. A title card informs us that when Ieyasu did in fact die, no one really cared. The Tokugawa peace continued. 

Here, once again, the Ninja too are powerless victims of fate despite their constant machinations. Yukimura tells Saizo to live and be human, advice he gives to the sisters in Tanegashima but does not take for himself staking everything on his revenge against Ieyasu which is, as he points out, pointless for Ieyasu was at death’s door anyway and his demise changed nothing. In his first of two entries in the series, Kazuo Ikehiro crafts some impressive set pieces beginning with a mist-bound underwater battle as Saizo and Yukimura make their escape by water to an epic flaming shuriken battle, though this time around the deaths are noticeably visceral. Men are drowned, stabbed, or caught on wooden spikes. Those who do not obey the ninja code are stabbed and pushed off cliffs while once again emotion is a weakness that brings about nothing more than death. Ikehiro’s frequent use of slow dissolves adds to the dreamlike feel of Saizo’s shadow existence even as the ninja themselves seem to be on the point of eclipse for what lies ahead for them in a world of peace in which there is no longer any need for stealth?

Shinobi no Mono 4: Siege (忍びの者 霧隠才蔵, Tokuzo Tanaka, 1964)

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When he began what would become the Shinobi no Mono series, Satsuo Yamamoto had wanted to put a more realistic spin on the ninja movie, shifting from the fantasy-esque wuxia with which the genre had been associated since the silent days to something that was largely devoid of romanticism. In the films he directed, the ninja are powerless manipulators doomed to live unhappy lives defined by a cruel and heartless code. Though still based on the same novel, the third film began to compromise that vision in the hero’s miraculous escape from certain death, ending on a note of ambivalent positivity in which Goemon declines the offer to join Ieyasu and instead walks out into independent freedom. 

The first three films had covered all of the action in Tomoyoshi Murayama’s serialised novel, and so the following four are based on original ideas by screenwriter Hajime Takaiwa save for episode six which is scripted by Kei Hattori and Kinya Naoi. Many of the same actors appear but in different roles while the action has moved on 15 years, skipping ahead from the unseen battle of Sekigahara to the siege of Osaka and the end of the Toyotomi. Raizo Ichikawa stars as another displaced Iga ninja nominally in the service of the Toyotomi but secretly longing to bump off Ieyasu not for reasons of revenge but because there is no place for ninja in his new and peaceful society. If they’re able to unseat him, they assume the situation will revert to the civil war society with the effete Hideyori (Junichiro Narita) too ineffective to assume control over the nascent nation. 

It has to be said, this version of events has rather misogynistic overtones with frequent speeches from Sanada Yukimura (Tomisaburo Wakayama) avowing that it’s all Lady’s Yodo’s (Otome Tsukimiya) fault for giving her son bad advice that he is too naive to know not to follow. In negotiating to end the siege at Osaka castle, Yukimura had advised it was better to strike back against Ieyasu and kill him as soon as possible, but Lady Yodo vetoed it and insisted she and her son remain locked up in relative safety. His conviction is somewhat born out seeing as Ieyasu had deliberately targeted the area of the castle where they assumed she was staying in order to further frighten her.

Nevertheless, he’s astute in realising it was all essentially a ruse and part of Ieyasu’s plan to force the Toyotomi into submission. The attack on the castle was only ever intended to engineer a peace treaty which Ieasyu himself presented and forced Hideyori to sign. Then again, there’s some strange symmetry in play. When Saizo enters the castle in an attempt to assassinate Ieyasu he mangles to trick him into killing his double instead, then when Ieyasu’s ninja try to assassinate Yukimura after following Saizo having known he would pretend to be dead and dig himself out of his own grave they also kill his double much to Ieyasu’s consternation. 

It’s this similarity that Saizo hints at when he pities a retainer of Ieyasu’s explaining that Nobunaga and Hideyoshi had tried to eliminate them but they survived while Ieyasu now wants to use them for his own ends but will likely do the same when they are no longer necessary to him. Thus what they want is a kind of chaos, desperate to assassinate Ieyasu to return to the world in which the ninja are able to influence events from the shadows. Even so his conviction is apparently shaken. As in the previous series, Saizo gains a love interest, Lady Akane (Midori Isomura), who has become a sex worker as an apparent act of self-harm after being raped by Tokugawa soldiers during the fall of Osaka castle. But as we’ve been repeatedly told, a ninja’s heart lies under the blade. Born in darkness, they shall die in darkness and are not permitted to fall in love. Thus Saizo rejects her affections, but eventually declares himself corrupted by wanting to die alongside Yukimura as a loyal soldier. The in-film lore would have us believe that Yukimura did not in fact die during the final assault but was spirited away by Saizo to plot Ieyasu’s downfall in the shadows. 

Directed by Tokuzo Tanaka in his only instalment in the series, the film is shot more like a conventional jidaigeki but returns something of the fantasy aesthetic to the ninja as they somersault through the forest. Saizo’s surname effectively means “hidden in the mist”, which is partly ironic seeing as Akane also describes her rape as being overcome by a thick fog, but is also symbolic of his frequent use of smoke bombs as a disappearing trick which again undermines the sense of realism with which the series began. Yukimura is fond of declaring that the clock cannot be turned back, a sentiment echoed by Akane and emphasising the sense of melancholy fatalism that cannot be avoided in a historical drama in which the outcome is already very well known, imbuing Tanaka’s take with the sense of elegy and legend Yamamoto had so deliberately rejected. 

Shinobi no Mono 3: Resurrection (新・忍びの者, Kazuo Mori, 1963)

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At the end of the second film in the Shinobi no Mono series, Goemon (Raizo Ichikawa) was led away to be boiled alive in oil after failing to assassinate Hideyoshi Toyotomi. Obviously, Goemon did not actually die, but exchanged places with a condemned prisoner thanks to the machinations of Hanzo Hattori (Saburo Date) which is a clear diversion from the accepted historical narrative to which the film otherwise remains more or less faithful. However, in this instalment more than all the others, Goemon is very much a shadow figure, pale and gaunt, who appears much less frequently on screen and mainly relies on stoking the fires of an already simmering succession conflict in the Toyotomi camp.

At this point, Hideyoshi has already made himself de facto leader of a unified Japan having been made the “kampaku”, advisor to the emperor, only to cede that position in favour of his adopted heir, Hidetsugu (Junichiro Narita) taking the title of “Taiko.” Hideyoshi has been childless for many years which is why he adopted his nephew, but the birth of his son by blood has dangerously unbalanced the palace order with Hidetsugu increasingly certain he’s become surplus to requirements. Meanwhile, in an effort to secure his position Hideyoshi has also embarked on an ambitious plan to conquer Korea as a means of getting to Ming China and circumventing the tributary requirements necessary for trading with it. 

This plan necessarily means that they need more money with Hideyoshi calling an end to all building and renovation projects including that of a Buddhist temple playing into the series’ themes about hubris in the face of Buddha though by this point Goemon too has lost faith in Buddhism in the clear absence of karmic retribution. As Ieyasu (Masao Mishima) points out, this works out well for him as it will stir discord among local lords who will be forced to squeeze their already exploited subjects even more earning nothing more than their resentment which will then blow back on oblivious Hideyoshi.  

Thus Goemon’s role mostly involves sneaking in and telling various people that others are plotting against them and they’d be better to get ahead of it. A secondary theme throughout the series has been a sense of powerlessness which is perhaps inevitable in a historical narrative in which we already know all of the outcomes. Ieyasu scoffs at Goemon, remarking that he thinks he’s walking his own path but is really being manipulated into walking that which Ieyasu has set down for him, though Goemon effectively rejects this stating at the conclusion that as Ieyasu believed he was using him he was also using Ieyasu to achieve his revenge on Hideyoshi for the death of his wife and son. In the historical narrative, Hideyoshi dies of a sudden illness as he does here with Goemon lamenting that his revenge is frustrated by the fact that Hideyoshi is now old and frail though he achieves it through symbolically cutting off his bloodline but explaining to him that Hideyoshi will not become the heir to anything because Ieyasu will be taking the role he has so patiently waited for. Hideyoshi has in any case perhaps disqualified himself as the father of a nation by wilfully sacrificing his adopted son, Hidetsugu, who was ordered to commit suicide to avoid any challenge to Hideyori after becoming desperate and debauched in the knowledge that his days were likely numbered anyway.

In any case, Goemon perhaps declares himself free in asking why he should care who’s in charge after Hanzo once again tries to recruit him to work for a now triumphant Ieyasu whose long years of simply waiting for everyone else to die have paid off. This is what passes for a happy ending in that he has thrown off the corrupt authority of the feudal era and discovered a way to live outside of it as a “free” man though as others point out the system hasn’t changed. Poor peasants continue to be exploited by lords who are greedy but also themselves oppressed by an equally ruler playing petty games of personal power. Fittingly, ninja tricks mainly revolve around smoke bombs and the covert use of noxious fumes to weaken the opposition as they creep in to spread their poison. Never shedding the series’ nihilistic tone, the film ends on a moment of ambivalent positivity albeit one of exile as Goemon declines the invitation to the fold instead wandering off for a life of hidden freedom in the shadows of a still corrupt society. 

Shinobi no Mono 2: Vengeance (続・忍びの者, Satsuo Yamamoto, 1963)

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Though Goemon might have thought himself free of his ninja past at the conclusion of the first film, he was unfortunately mistaken. Shinobi no Mono 2: Vengeance (続・忍びの者, Zoku Shinobi no Mono) sees him trying to live quietly with Maki and their son in a cabin in the woods, but Nobunaga is more powerful than ever. He’s wiped out the Iga ninja and is currently hunting down stragglers. Try as he might, what Goemon discovers the impossibility of living outside of the chaos of the feudal era. 

After he’s caught and suffers a family tragedy, Goemon and Maki (Shiho Fujimura) move to her home village in Saiga which is the last refuge of the Ikko rebels who oppose Nobunaga. This time around, the film, based on the novel by Tomoyoshi Murayama, even more depicts the ninja as backstage actors silently shuffling history into place. Thus Goemon takes advantage of a rift between the steady Mitsuhide (So Yamamura) and loose cannon Nobunaga (Tomisabur0 Wakayama) in an attempt to push him into rebellion. But what he may discover is that even with one tyrant gone, another will soon rise in its place. Hideyoshi (Eijiro Tono) seems to be forever lurking in the background, while Ieyasu makes a few experiences explaining that he intends to wait it out, allowing his rivals to destroy each other so he can swoop down and snatch the throne at minimal cost. 

But he too has his ninja such as the legendary Hanzo Hattori (Saburo Date) who arrives to complicate the intrigue and tempt Goemon away from his attempts to live a normal life. Interestingly enough, one of the factors leading to Nobunaga’s downfall is his disregard for Buddhism in frequently burning temples associated with ninja along with everyone inside them. Burning with a desire for vengeance, Goemon describes Nobunaga as inhuman, a demon, though he also embodies the vagaries of the feudal era in which no one is really free. Nobunaga has built a large castle estate for himself while ordinary people continue to suffer under onerous demands from local lords. Hideyoshi has also done something similar in an attempt to bolster his status and prepare for his own inevitable bid for national hegemony. 

The implication is that though the constant warfare of the Sengoku era is of course bad for farmers in particular, the political machinations which revolve around the egos of three men are far removed from the lives of ordinary people. Even so, the code of the ninja continues to be severe as we’re reminded that love and human happiness are not permitted to them. A female ninja spy working for Hanzo is despatched to Nobunaga’s castle to seduce his retainer Ranmaru but is cautioned that she must not allow her heart to be stirred. Predictably this seems to be a promise she couldn’t keep, eventually dying alongside him during an all out attack on the castle. 

Goemon discovers something much the same in encountering further losses and personal tragedies, but takes on a somewhat crazed persona in his continuing pursuit of Nobunaga, grinning wildly amid the fires of his burning castle while taunting Nobunaga that he is the ghost of the Iga ninjas he has killed. Then again, he’s laid low by his own ninja tricks on discovering that Hideyoshi has had a special “nightingale floor” installed that lets out a song whenever someone crosses it, instantly ruining his attempt to infiltrate the castle. “The days when a few ninja could control the fate of the world are over,” Ieyasu ironically reflects though perhaps signalling the transition he embodies from the chaos of the Sengoku era to the oppress peace of the Tokugawa shogunate.

Somehow even bleaker than its predecessor, Yamamoto deepens the sense of nihilistic dread with increasing scenes of surreal violence and human cruelty from a baby been thrown on a fire to a dying commander teetering on his one leg and holding out just long enough to gesture at a sign requesting vengeance against those who have wronged him. Echoing the fate of the real Goemon, dubbed the Robin Hood of Japan for his tendency to steal from the rich to give to the poor, the conclusion is in its own way shocking but then again perhaps not for there can be no other in this incredibly duplicitous world of constant cruelty and petty violence. 

Ninja, A Band of Assassins (忍びの者, Satsuo Yamamoto, 1962)

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Ninja in Japanese cinema had largely been relegated to the realms of childish fantasy prior to Satsuo Yamamoto’s Ninja, A Band of Assassins (忍びの者, Shinobi no Mono) which cast a distinctly less heroic light on the famed mercenary spies of the feudal era. Indeed, there’s something reminiscent of the cult of militarism in the repressive nature of the ninja code and the hero Goemon’s (Raizo Ichikawa) original allegiance to it despite his father’s wariness and attempt to warn him that human happiness has no place in the life of a ninja. 

As the leader of Goemon’s clan, Sandayu (Yunosuke Ito), explains the ninja are obliged to serve whichever lords require their service, but he refuses to work with Oda Nobunaga (Tomisaburo Wakayama, billed as Kenzaburo Jo) owing to his famous animosity towards them. He even goes so far as to call Nobunaga a greater threat to the ninja than demons or devils. Opening in 1573, the film takes place at a tumultuous moment as Nobunaga continues to solidify his plan to unite the whole of the land under his banner by absorbing or defeating rival clans. The pre-credits sequence finds Goemon playing dead on a battlefield surrounded by ominous crows and encountering another ninja from a rival clan, Kizaru (Ko Nishimura), who has become a more literal kind of vulture in stealing from the dead.

Stealing is against the ninja code and something of which the young and idealistic Goemon fiercely disapproves. Nevertheless, in a cruel irony he’s forced to become a burglar in an effort to raise funds for more weapons to combat Nobunaga whom he has also been ordered to assassinate in return for his life after having been caught having an affair with Sandayu’s wife, Inone (Kyoko Kishida). Goemon is inspired by the legendary figure dubbed the Japanese Robin Hood for his mission stealing money from the rich to give to the poor, but here is far from heroic. When his affair with Inone is discovered by a servant, Goemon kills him to maintain the silence. He then believes that Inone has also been killed after falling into a well and attempts to flee the scene only to be confronted by Sandayu. 

Only too late does to he begin to understand what his father tried to warn him about, that the code of the ninja is cruel and unforgiving. It cannot grant him pride or happiness despite the self-satisfied glow he feels on having been singled out by Sandayu as a protege. A ninja must be ready to sever all ties to those he loves and endure intense torture without speaking. If caught in an impossible situation he must scar his face and take his own life as one of Goemon’s acquaintances eventually does after being captured by Nobunaga. Goemon assumes he has no reason to be afraid because he is the most skilled ninja in the garrison and a single ninja can take down a fortress all on his own, but in reality he is powerless, merely a puppet manipulated by Sandayu for his own ends. After falling in love with a sex worker, Maki (Shiho Fujimura), he grows tired of his missions, gives up on burglary, and makes no move to assassinate Nobunaga but is pursued by Sandayu’s minions, the irony being that not even a ninja can escape from the confined space of ninjadom.

This world is so steeped in secrecy that nothing is as it seems and Goemon discovers the rug pulled out from under him in more ways than one before beginning to realise that Sandayu has deliberately engineered his downfall and was most likely behind his father’s murder in an attempt to get his hands on his recipe for gunpowder which is, as Nobunaga says, the future of warfare. Nevertheless, even within its commitment to realism the film contains plenty of ninja tricks from sudden appearances to superhuman leaps and expert shuriken throwing and grappling hooks.  The sense of melancholy futility implied by the presence of the crows in the opening scenes never recedes, Yamamoto frequently descending into mists as Goemon sinks into his confusion and eventual disillusionment with the tenets of ninjadom. Rival ninja clans more obsessed with their reputation and status vie for the head of Nobunga while all Goemon wants is the right to live a quiet life with Maki though that’s something that largely cannot be found amid the constant chaos of the feudal era. 

Golden Eyes (100発100中 黄金の眼, Jun Fukuda, 1968)

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Three years after taking down illegal arms dealers, “Interpol” agent Andrew Hoshino (Akira Takarada) returns with another globetrotting adventure, this time concerning a missing coin worth a great deal to an amoral gold smuggler. Ironfinger had appeared in the midst of Bond-mania and boasted a script by none other than Kichachi Okamoto which was full of cartoonish fun and surreal humour as Andy made use of a series of spy gadgets to aid him in his cause. The similarly Bond-referencing sequel, Golden Eyes (100発100中 黄金の眼, Hyappatsu Hyakuchu: Ogon no Me) , attempts something much the same but perhaps without so much of Okamoto’s trademark sophisticated silliness. 

This time the action opens in Beirut where a chauffeur is being hunted by a man in a helicopter as he attempts to escape through the sand dunes. Skewered by a giant grappling hook, the driver’s body is apparently then deposited on the roof of a hotel, causing not a little embarrassment to gold smuggling kingpin Stonefeller (see what they did there?) who is already quite worried about attracting the attention of the local police. Meanwhile, Andy happens to be in Beirut on another “vacation”, having fun driving the owner of a shooting game in an arcade out of his mind before he runs into a little girl who tells him that she’s looking for an assassin to avenge the death of her father, the body deposited on the hotel roof. All she can afford to pay him is the silver dollar her dad gave her as a keepsake before he died, but it’s good enough for the kindhearted Andy who decides to get justice for the little girl no matter what. Just then, however, an attempt is made on his life by means of a bomb hidden in a bouquet given to him by pretty Japanese singer Mitsuko (Tomomi Sawa) who is in Beirut to find wealthy men to finance her love of rally car racing. 

The major antagonist is an ancient American “industrialist” with a dog called Sinbad who thinks that the gold must flow and that he’s doing a public service delivering it to Japan where its absence only highlights the “backwardness” of the Japanese state. Stonefeller is also blind but an ace sniper thanks to a directional microphone in place of a sight on his rifle. In any case, though Stonefeller is the kingpin, the true “villain” is Kurokawa (Yoshio Tsuchiya) who is responsible for the death of the little girl’s father, killed while thought to be in possession of the missing gold coin. The coin later makes villains of the two Beiruti gangsters working with Stonefeller who end up chasing after Kurokawa to try and retrieve it while Andy, mysterious “reporter” Ruby (Bibari Maeda), and earnest detective Tezuka (Makoto Sato) do their best to stop them. 

The international villainy may reflect a certain anxiety about Japan’s increasingly global role, rising economy prosperity, and relationship with the Americans, but it’s also a little guilty of exoticisation in its Middle Eastern setting with the majority of Beiruties played by Japanese actors in awkward brown face. An early, spectacular set piece sees Andy and Tezuka beset by Stonefeller’s goons swarming over the dunes dressed as mothers pushing prams which turn out to be fitted with machine guns while Andy sets up a complex stunt which sets off two abandoned weapons with a single pistol shot to take down the bad guys. 

Mitsuko, meanwhile, seems to be a symbol of out of control celebrity, an aspiring singer taking part in rally races sponsored by the Japan Economic Council dedicated to fuel efficiency. She is content to be discovered with a dead body because of all the free publicity it’s about to buy her, but more than holds her own when in a difficult situation with the amoral Kurokawa, perhaps a representative of unbridled capitalist greed. Almost blown up with flowers, encased in plaster like a giant mummy, and delivered poisoned gas by room service, Andy maintains an ambiguous cool while still making constant references to his dear French mama waiting for him at home in Paris. As expected, no one except for Tezuka has been quite honest about their intentions or identities, but it hardly seems to matter as they work together while pursuing their own angles to get their hands on the coin and stop the Stonefellers of the world messing around in their economy.