Tag: Shinobu Araki

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 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. 

Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather (明日は日本晴れ, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1948)

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According to the driver aboard the bus at the centre of Hiroshi Shimizu’s Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather (明日は日本晴れ, Asu wa Nipponbare),  “that ridiculous war ruined everything”. Shimizu had directed a similar film in 1936, Mr Thank You, in which times had been hard for all but people tried to stay cheerful and help where they could. But here, by contrast, the atmosphere is much less jovial. Everyone is fed up, unhappy, dissatisfied, and irritated far beyond the inconvenience of being delayed on their journey.

Once again shot on location, the film follows a bus on the outskirts of Kyoto making the journey along a mountain pass from the city to an onsen town before breaking down half way. It’s several miles across difficult mountainous terrain to the nearest town in either direction and many people aboard the bus are elderly or have disabilities that make simply walking the rest of the way a difficult prospect while no one can really say when help will come because they’re dependent on the arrival of the following service or some other form of transport that could get a message out for a mechanic or replacement bus. 

In any case, just as in Mr Thank You there is a diverse contingent aboard each of whom have particular reasons for travelling and for being upset about the delay. A trio of men begin by complaining that this journey which once took two hours now takes three while the bus itself has become worn down and unreliable. Even so, the fares are now much more expensive. What’s most surprising is that the men loudly and openly discuss their occupation as black market traders while simultaneously complaining about an increased police presence interfering with their work. An irritated, besuited man sitting across the aisle is the only one to challenge them, asking if they pay taxes on their clearly illegal earnings to which the answer is obvious though the men mostly complain about how it wouldn’t be worth their while if they did rather than outright denying a responsibility to pay. The man tells them that they’re part of the problem and that the future of the country is assured only if people pay their taxes, with which the men otherwise seem to agree. When the bus breaks down, one of them is most worried that his late arrival will cause concern for his wife who may assume he’s been caught and arrested.

But there’s a small drama playing out in the front of the bus too as the conductress gossips with the driver certain that the beautiful woman sitting half-way back is a well-known Tokyo dancer, Waka, who she’s heard is on her way to bury the ashes of her child seemingly born out of wedlock. The driver, Sei, grimaces slightly as if he didn’t want to have this conversation and as we later discover once knew Waka long ago before the war which has changed each of them. A blind man, Fuku, now working as a masseur after losing his sight in the war, once knew them both hatches a plan to try and get them to patch things up. But as Sei later says, they’ve both been through far too much and are no longer the same people. Nothing can be as it was before, but in a way that’s alright. There is still hope for the future on the broken bus that is post-war Japan if only someone can figure out how to get the engine going again. 

Nevertheless, the scars from this war are still very noticeable. One of the black-marketers has a missing leg and later lays into an old man who confesses that he was a military commander, hounding him for his responsibility for the folly of the war which men like him forced them to continue long after it was obvious that it was lost. Fuku is much more sanguine and after a minor misunderstanding able to find a way to communicate with an elderly man who is deaf despite the incompatibility of their disabilities as they help each other board the replacement bus to the new Japan. Sei, and the slightly younger conductress who is not so secretly in love with him, meanwhile remain stuck on the broken bus symbolically unable to move forward no matter how much Sei insists it’s time to “get over the war” and that he just wants to forget the past and start living again. Perhaps it’s for men like him who seem fine on the surface that the scars run deepest, overburdened by all that this “ridiculous war” took from them in unlived futures and broken dreams. Meanwhile Shimizu follows the other bus onward along the precarious and winding mountain roads hoping for better weather in the hot springs town ahead.

Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather screens at Japan Society New York on May 17 as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part 2: The Postwar and Independent Years.

The Blind Menace (不知火検校, Kazuo Mori, 1960)

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Two years before finding fame as Zatoichi, Shintaro Katsu starred as his mirror image in a tale of pure villainy, The Blind Menace (不知火検校, Shiranui Kengyo). As the title suggests, the film follows the upward trajectory and eventual downfall of an unsighted man who gleefully rapes and pillages his way to becoming the leader of his community aided and abetted by the ills of the feudal era which allow him to profit from his crimes until the past finally catches up with him.

After all as he later says, “as long you as you keep rising in the world, past misdeeds don’t matter.” In any case, even as a child the man who would later be known as Suginoichi (Shintaro Katsu) is incredibly unpleasant. In the opening festival sequence he picks his nose and flicks it in a barrel of sake so that the men drinking will abandon it. The only sign of possible goodness in him is that he takes the sake home for his mother to enjoy, though he seems to relish the idea of her unwittingly drinking his snot so perhaps that was the real purpose. Other hobbies of his include conning wealthy passersby out of a ryo with a well worn scam in which he asks them to read a letter from his uncle which mentions that it should include one ryo only what’s in there is a stone. When the reader explains the situation, he accuses them of trying to take advantage of his blindness and makes a fuss about it until they’re embarrassed into coughing up a ryo of their own (not a small sum for the time period). 

In some ways his poverty and disability might explain his behaviour. His family set up is subverted with his mother much like him money hungry and willing to do anything to get it while his saintly, henpecked father is gentle and honest. This might have taught him the wrong lessons about masculinity that lead him to see his father as weak in allowing the world to trample him while taking his mother’s advice to heart that if they only had a 1000 ryo they could get him trained up properly so that he might one day become a Kengyo which is a little bit like a community leader for the blind with social status and political influence. 

It’s this kind of social affirmation he seems to crave, but is essentially a narcissistic sociopath who takes advantage a stereotype that in some ways infantilises the blind and those with other disabilities who are believed to be pure-hearted and incapable of intrigue or evil. He seems to come to the rescue of a noblewoman who asked his boss, the Kengyo, to lend her money secretly because her brother has been caught embezzling but then rapes her, asks for the money back, and blackmails her into further acts of sexual exploitation offering her only 5 ryo a time knowing she needs 50. He thinks nothing of using his acupuncture skills to kill a man who was carrying 200 ryo to buy a “boneless girl” for a freak show and then framing a man who saw him do it but agreed to say nothing for a 50% cut for the crime. Suginoichi later teams up with “Severed Head” Kurakichi (Fujio Suga) to commit a series of burglaries including that of the Kengyo master who he also has killed to usurp his postion. 

But as he said, once his recognition is in sight with an invitation from the shogun everything begins to fall apart as all his wrongdoing starts to catch up with him. The feudal world had allowed him to prosper partly because of other people’s greed but also the social codes that favour shame and secrecy along with people’s unwillingness to accept that a blind man can also be selfish and evil despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Elegantly lensed by Kazuo Mori who brings a sense of realism to the hardbitten backstreets of the feudal poor, the film may suggest that the wealthy only get that way by trickery and exploitation and the only way to rise to the loftiest place is to be like Suginoichi and not care what you do to get there but is clear that once you arrive you won’t stay very long because one day the past will really will come back to bite you. 

4K restoration trailer (no subtitles)

Policeman (警察官, Tomu Uchida, 1933)

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“No one knows what will happen to us in this world of illusion” muses a conflicted villain in Tomu Uchida’s seminal proto-procedural, Policeman (警察官, Keisatsukan, AKA Police Officer). Forever an enigma, Uchida had made his name through a series of broadly progressive, left-wing films featuring strong social critique, yet he also made this mildly authoritarian, overtly pro-police piece of militarist propaganda long before it became necessary to do so. But then, look a little closer and you’ll find him subtly undercutting the messaging, reconfiguring his tale of a courageous policeman who sets aside his personal feelings in the pursuit of justice as one of tragedy in which a man ultimately imprisons himself by doing so. 

The hero, earnest policeman Itami (Isamu Kosugi), was once as he later reveals a wayward young man. “The world was against me, I thought. I was young then” he sighs, explaining that he owes his life to his boss and mentor, Sgt. Miyabe (Taisuke Matsumoto), who became a second father and set him on the right path which he now of course follows. His long lost childhood friend Tetsuo (Eiji Nakano), with whom he reconnects during a routine vehicle check, apparently experienced something similar having fallen out with his wealthy industrialist father but claims that he’s become an elite layabout spending all his time at the golf course and asking his dad for money every time he runs out which seems nothing if not contradictory but then familial relationships can be complex. In any case, a repeated motif sees the two men taking diverging paths, literally, the implication being that they’ve each chosen different directions in response in to the same adolescent crisis when in a sense “orphaned” through parental disconnection. 

On hearing Tetsuo’s story, Itami asks him with thinly veiled horror if he hasn’t become a communist, that being a fairly common and fashionable way for a young man from a wealthy family to fall out with his father. Tetsuo laughs it off, wishing it were political but claiming somewhat vaguely that it was a matter of feeling. The exchange is revealing in that screenwriter Eizo Yamauchi had apparently been instructed to portray the criminal gang at the film’s centre, of which Tetsuo is later revealed to be a member, as “communist” though no political ideology or identity is ever directly stated. Nevertheless, the central drama is clearly inspired by the Omori Bank Robbery (1932) in which a three members of the Communist Party robbed the Kawasaki Daiichi Bank without the knowledge or authority of party officials in order to gain funding for the movement. The incident backfired, badly discrediting the Communist Party (illegal at the time) and thereby imploding the most viable source of opposition to rising militarism. Armed bank robbery not being a common occurrence in Japan, most viewers would necessarily associate this brand of criminality with “communism”, killing two birds with one stone as the film does its intended job of making the world seem more dangerous than it is while reinforcing an authoritarian message that the police will protect. 

Yet, on the other hand, perhaps it really was “feeling” after all. The relationship between the two men has an intensely homoerotic quality with frequent flashbacks to their carefree high school days during which they read each other romantic German poetry, played rugby, and frolicked on a beach in the company of a very large dog. Itami largely ignores his potential love interest in Miyabe’s pretty daughter, save for briefly thinking about her while on a three-day stakeout of the robbers’ den, while constantly chasing Tetsuo after becoming suspicious that he may be the man responsible for shooting Miyabe and fleeing the scene after a robbery. His inner torment lies partly in the conflict between his responsibilities to friendship and the law, but also perhaps in his unresolved feelings for Tetsuo. Driven half out of his mind, his final epiphany crying out “I am a policeman” is as much a rejection of an identity as a claiming of one, entirely sublimating himself within the image of the role that he has chosen to play in society shedding his personal feeling and desires as he does so. In “saving” Tetsuo, shooting him in the hand to prevent his suicide, tenderly cuffing and then embracing him, he evokes both a sense of return and forgiveness and another of goodbye further enhanced by the abruptness of the transition which follows. 

Taken in this light, the late and extremely jarring slide into overt propaganda through a series of title cards loudly proclaiming the virtue of the police takes on a differing kind of anxiety in its authoritarian dimensions as a force which destroys rather than protects in its capacity to erase individual identity. Nevertheless, Uchida also includes numerous shots of heroic policemen in their dashing uniforms as they assemble for drill or show up en masse on their bikes ready to fight crime. Tetsuo’s final appearance, meanwhile, is extremely sinister dressed as he is in an outfit which would later become associated with fascism, his meticulous uniformity in strong contrast to the then crazed and dishevelled Itami still in his crumpled kimono with messy hair and three days’ worth of beard growth from his stakeout. Yet there’s nothing but pain and fear in his eyes as he realises that his friend has seen through him, Itami rather ostentatiously bundling Tetsuo’s lighter into a handkerchief almost as if he meant to him let know. 

Shooting mainly on location, Uchida’s camera is rarely at rest even employing a series of complicated vehicle tracking shots one of which eventually resolves itself into a first person perspective while the final sequence is tense in the extreme with its gunfire, search lights, and complex choreography. His use of flashback is precise and unusual, far ahead of its time in its acuity as if we actually see Itami’s thought process on screen jumping from one idea to another, while the meeting of the two men on the desolate docks seems to be drenched in loneliness and a sense of futility even while free of the oppressive shadows from the buildings which seemed to dwarf them in the city. Somehow desperately sad despite the catharsis of its final scene, Policeman subtly implies there might not be much difference between hero and villain, or between communist and militarist, save walking one way and not another as two men find their friendship frustrated by time and circumstance coming together only to be driven apart. 

Freelance Samurai (桃太郎侍, Kenji Misumi, 1957)

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An abandoned son resolves to wander Japan killing the “demons” of Edo-era society in Kenji Misumi’s adaptation of the popular novel by Kiichiro Yamate, Freelance Samurai (桃太郎侍, Momotaro-Zamurai, AKA The Demon Crusader). Starring a young Raizo Ichikawa in dual roles as twins separated at birth, a familiar jidaigeki plot device, Misumi’s drama is among his most conventional but still finds the demon-hunting hero of the title resolutely rejecting the “silly rules of the samurai” in refusing to serve or be served while resisting the persistent corruptions of the feudal society. 

First spotted returning a paper balloon to some children playing in the street, the hero (Raizo Ichikawa) later gives his name as “Momotaro”, the legendary folklore champion who was born from a peach and then went on to befriend various forest creatures travelling with them to fight the cruel demons who had been oppressing the peasants of the farmland where his adoptive parents lived. The name is a sense ironic in that it reflects his own fatherless existence having discovered that he is actually Shinjiro, the younger brother of the heir to a nearby clan, Shinnosuke (also Raizo Ichikawa). At this particular cultural moment, twins were thought inauspicious with one usually cast out, Momotaro in someways more fortunate than most in that he was sent away and raised by his mother to whom he was apparently devoted. In fact, as he says, he only delayed his demon-killing mission out of consideration for her but that now that she has sadly passed away he is free to pursue justice as a wandering ronin determined to serve no master but himself. 

This insistence on justice and opposition to samurai oppression is made plain in the opening scene in which he rescues pickpocket Kosuzu (Michiyo Kogure) from two samurai she’d robbed who were hassling her. She of course falls in love with him, but is also party to the central conspiracy engineered by high ranking retainer Shuzen (Shosaku Sugiyama) who is plotting to unseat Shinnosuke in favour of the lord’s illegitimate young son Mantaro (Junta Yamamoto) with the help of ambitious underling Iga (Seizaburo Kawazu). Momotaro is swept into the intrigue when he rescues the beautiful daughter of loyal retainer Iori (Gen Shimizu), Yuri (Yoko Uraji), from an attempted kidnapping. Both sides want to recruit him for his bravery and sword skill, but Momotaro is reluctant to help either of them especially on discovering the ironic coincidence that he finds himself caught up in a succession struggle in the very clan which previously cast him out. 

Deciding to help when hearing that Shinnosuke has been poisoned, Momotaro demonstrates his strategic abilities in coming up with a ruse to trick the conspirators but remains somewhat conflicted remembering his mother’s dying words that he should hold no grudges even as a part of him continues to resent his abandonment. That may in part explain his defiant rejection of the hierarchal society, ignoring the “silly” rules of the samurai while insisting on equality in refusing to serve or be served by anyone else. In a nod to the folktale, his greatest friend is a humble peddler, Inosuke “the monkey man” (Shunji Sakai) who gives him a place to stay in the rundown tenement where he lives affectionately known as “ghost apartments”. Even so, Inosuke as much servant as sidekick, and while he is in a sense torn between the earthy pickpocket Kosuzu who is later redeemed through her loyalty to him and the beautiful samurai daughter Yuri it seems fairly clear that he will eventually opt for his class-appropriate match the only surprising thing being that it is she who transgressively breaks with convention in abandoning her samurai home in order to follow Momotaro out on the road as he hunts other “demons” corrupting the social order all over Japan. 

Shot in colour academy ratio, Freelance Samurai features little of Misumi’s trademark natural vistas save for the poignant pillow shots of flowers growing in the compound though it does reflect his preoccupation with absent fathers and perpetual wandering. In the many dualities in play, it is also interesting that Momotaro is depicted as the more capable of the brothers, Ichikawa’s characterisation of the cosseted Shinnosuke as a kind and compassionate, effete young man rather than the strapping warrior the heir to a clan is expected to be hinting perhaps at the perceived weakness that allowed the conspirators to assume they could usurp him. Similarly, it’s Michiyo Kogure’s tragic pickpocket undone by her love for the noble samurai that makes the deeper impression rather than the rather insipid Yuri who makes her mark only in her final decision to follow Momotaro unbidden. Momotaro’s quest may in a sense be ironic in that he outwardly rejects the superiority of the samurai but effectively preserves it even as he determines to clean out the oppressive “demons” intent on corrupting the land just as his folkloric namesake had done, but in its own way has its defiant nobility in his fierce love of justice and equality. 

In a Ring of Mountains (中山七里, Kazuo Ikehiro, 1962)

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A noble-hearted libertine stands up for love in an increasingly corrupt Edo in Kazuo Ikehiro’s adaptation of the well-known novel by Shin Hasegawa, In a Ring of Mountains (中山七里, Nakayama Shichiri, AKA 7 Miles to Nakayama). The son of a Daiei executive, Ikehiro joined the studio in 1950 working as an AD to Kenji Mizoguchi, Kazuo Mori, and Kon Ichikawa before being promoted to director in 1960 and then briefly demoted back to AD for annoying studio head Masaichi Nagata with the satirical content of his second film. Nevertheless, he later developed a close working relationship with top star Raizo Ichikawa and gained a reputation for unconventional jidaigeki displaying many of the techniques associated with the New Wave rather than the often more classically minded period films which were a Daiei mainstay. 

In this rather more modern tale set sometime in the Edo era, Ichikawa stars as big guy around town Masakichi who is nevertheless viewed with suspicion by local law enforcement officer Tohachi (Koh Sugita) who rebukes him for spending too much time with “yakuza” while out on the road conducting business for the lumber yard where he works. As we’ll come to discover this is a bit rich because Tohachi is as bent as they come, later raiding a gambling den in order to seize the proceeds for himself while in cahoots with equally corrupt magistrate who is also Masakichi’s boss but has designs on his girlfriend Oshima (Tamao Nakamura). After Masakichi proposes to her and goes so far as to set up a house and set a date to solemnise the union, his boss rapes Oshima which leads to her committing suicide and Masakichi killing him thereafter heading out on the run vowing to be Tohachi’s enemy for evermore. Sometime later, however, he gets himself mixed up in intrigue in another town where the corrupt magistrate is actually running the illegal gambling den and taking advantage of a naive young man, Tokunosuke (Koichi Ose), to press him into debt while trying to get his hands on his fiancée Onaka (also Tamao Nakamura) who happens to look exactly like Oshima. 

Something is very definitely rotten in Edo, the corruption so rampant as to be all but inescapable but Masakichi is so jaded that to begin with he doesn’t much care only to be reawakened on realising the same thing is happening again and to another woman who looks like his first love. Before he even sees her, he half-heartedly tries to warn Tokunosuke off gambling realising that he has no idea what he’s doing and seems to be having a run of very bad luck but Tokunosuke is a stubborn and insecure man who doesn’t know what’s good for him making one bad decision after another. When they are forced on the run together, Tokunosuke can’t help but feel his masculinity is being challenged by Masakichi’s infinite capability and is convinced that Onaka will eventually choose to leave with him. Consequently he repeatedly attempts to convince Onaka that Masakichi is a third wheel while quite obviously out of his depth and entirely incapable of protecting her from the mess that he has in part made through his series of poor decisions and general uselessness. 

In this case, the hero isn’t so much standing up to injustice in the corrupt Edo-era society as standing up for love, exorcising his guilt over having been unable to protect Oshima by ensuring that Tokunosuke and Onaka’s romance is allowed to blossom. Even so, Onaka eventually concedes that his eyes frighten her while he remains trapped in the past reassuring her that he is aware she and Oshima are not the same and has no desire to intrude on her romantic destiny. The final showdown literally takes place in the ruins of the destroyed society as the trio take refuge in an abandoned village, an entire house later collapsing as Masakichi fights off Tohachi’s goons while beset by a heavy mist. Making frequent use of dissolves and canted angles to reflect Masakichi’s listlessness and sense of despair along with a couple of songs performed by Yukio Hashi, Ikehiro’s jidaigeki drama is an unusually romantic affair as the hero stands up to injustice only indirectly as means of rescuing love from the oppressive corruptions of Edo-era society. 

Trailer (no subtitles)

The Third Shadow Warrior (第三の影武者, Umetsugu Inoue, 1963)

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“In this world the weak are playthings of the strong” according to the hidden villain concealing himself slightly to the side in Umetsugu Inoue’s dark identity drama The Third Shadow Warrior (第三の影武者, Daisan no Kagemusha). Adapting a novel by Norio Nanjo, Inoue, most closely associated with sophisticated musicals, shoots in the manner of a ghost story adapting the trappings of a minor parable on the consequences of selling one’s soul for advancement in complicity with an inherently broken feudal order. 

Opening in 1564, the film wastes no time reminding us that the samurai were cruel and duplicitous, a troop of them riding through the contested mountain territory of Hida bearing the severed heads of their enemies casually insulting peasants as they go. Young farmer Kyonosuke (Raizo Ichikawa), however, can’t help but think that they’re heroic and dashing, longing like many young men as the voiceover explains to make his fortune as a samurai in this the age of war. Kyonosuke gets his wish when retainer Shinomura (Nobuo Kaneko) turns up and offers him a job at the castle, only it’s not quite what he expected. Bearing a striking similarity to lord Yasutaka, he has been hired as his third “shadow”, a decoy intended to shield the lord from harm. 

Sitting down with his two new brothers, Kyonosuke remarks how ironic it is that he’s here to escape the land but Kuwano (Katsuhiko Kobayashi) is patiently saving up his pay with the intention of using it to buy a farm and settle down with a beautiful wife. His is the most dangerous of doubling roles as the lord’s battlefield stand-in, while Ishihara (Yuji Hamada), a former actor apparently not much good with the sword, takes his place behind closed walls. Kyonosuke is quite taken with the world of the samurai, but Ishihara cautions that he’ll soon tire of this “phoney life”. In accepting this devil’s bargain, Kyonosuke has in essence consented to his own murder. A shadow man, he can no longer call himself Kyonosuke, but nor can he say he is Yasutaka. He has no fixed identity and is merely in waiting for a veil. Worse still as Ishihara has begun to suspect, they no longer have bodily autonomy because their physicality must match that of the lord. When he is blinded in a battlefield mishap with an arrow, so must they be. Deciding he’d rather not lose an arm, Kyonosuke finds himself in an altercation with his other self which leads to his demise. He intends to make a life for himself under his own name with another clan, but is forced to permanently assume Yasutaka’s identity after being cornered by Shinomura intent on manipulating him for his own ends. 

“I’m no puppet, I no longer need a puppeteer” Kyonosuke exclaims drawing strength from embracing his new identity as a samurai lord, but perhaps overreaches himself in ambitious desire failing to see the various ways he is still merely a pawn in a bigger game as Yasutaka himself once was because the lord is only ever an empty vessel and far more expendable than might be assumed. Princess Teru (Hizuru Takachiho), Yasutaka’s conquest bride, declares that she is “just a doll, the strongest will win me” but is of course playing a role herself, one which she does not desire but has been thrust upon her while her cousin, Sadamitsu (Shigeru Amachi), is engaged in a much more active piece of long form role play. Only the lord’s concubine (Masayo Banri) sees through him, falling for the gentle peasant after the rough lord who toyed with her, but their complicated love eventually seals his fate even as he believes it offers him victory. Kyonosuke became a samurai to escape his lack of agency but is arguably much less free than he ever was, driven slowly out of his mind by his fractured sense of identity and realising that in killing the only man who knew who he “really” was, he also killed himself. 

Quite literally imprisoned, Kyonosuke finds himself a shadow once again neither one man nor another, denied an identity and forever a puppet of duplicitous game players better versed in the realities of the samurai existence. “How ugly fighting over this transient kingdom” the princess disdainfully remarks while herself engaging this apparently meaningless foolishness, reminded by her cousin that a princess may hold the keys to a castle or even a nation even if he implies she is little more than his tool, a puppet to be manipulated if knowingly. Shooting with deep, expressionist shadows, chiaroscuro lighting, and a melancholy voiceover Inoue frames his tale as a parabolic caution against selling one’s soul for gold but also a crushing indictment of the inequalities of the feudal order built on wilful hypocrisy and cynical exploitation. 

Bronze Magician (妖僧, Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1963)

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Even when you’re the empress, a woman has little freedom. Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Bronze Magician (妖僧, Yoso) is loosely based on a historical scandal concerning Nara-era empress Koken/Shotoku and a Rasputin-like monk, Dokyo, who unlike his counterpart in the film, eventually tried to seize the throne for himself alone only to have his ambitions frustrated by the empress’ death and the fierce resistance of her courtiers. As the title implies, Kinugasa is more interested in Dokyo than he is in the perilous position of Nara-era women even in power, painting his fall from grace as a Buddhist parable about a man who pays a heavy price for succumbing to worldly passions. 

As the film opens, Dokyo (Raizo Ichikawa) emerges from a shallow cave amid many other caves after meditating for 10 years during which he reached a higher level of enlightenment and obtained mystic powers. Now he thinks it’s time to continue the teachings of departed mentor Doen and use his abilities to “actively do good and save the masses”. Before that, however, he does some not quite Buddhist things like turning a rat into a living skeleton, and twisting a snake into a tangle. In any case, he begins roaming the land, miraculously healing the sick. While reviving a thief who had been killed by samurai after trying to make off with a bird they shot, Dokyo is spotted by a retainer of the empress who brings news of his miracles back to her closest advisors. 

Empress Koken (Yukiko Fuji), in the film at least, was a sickly child and even after ascending the throne has often been ill. She is currently bedridden with a painful respiratory complaint that is giving her servants cause for concern. None of the priests they’ve brought in to pray for her (apparently how you treat serious illness in the Nara era) has been of much use. The empress’ steward Mabito (Tatsuya Ishiguro) orders that Dokyo be found and brought to the palace to see if he can cure Koken, which he does while stressing that he’s helping her not because she’s the empress but in the same way as he would anyone else. 

As might be expected, the empress’ prolonged illness has made her a weak leader and left the door open for unscrupulous retainers intent on manipulating her position for themselves. There is intrigue in the court. The prime minister (Tomisaburo Wakayama) is colluding with a young prince to depose Koken and sieze power. Left with little oversight, he’s been embezzling state funds to bolster his position while secretly paying priests to engineer Koken’s illness continue. Dokyo’s arrival is then a huge threat to his plans, not only in Koken’s recovery and a subsequent reactivation of government but because Dokyo, like Koken, is of a compassionate, egalitarian mindset. She genuinely cares that the peasants are suffering under a bad and self-interested government and sees it as her job to do something about it, which is obviously bad news if you’re a venal elite intent on abusing your power to fill your pockets while the nation starves. 

As the prime minister puts it, however, the empress and most of her courtiers are mere puppets, “naive children”. At this point in history, power lies in the oligarchical executive who are only advised by the empress and don’t actually have to do what she says. As she is also a woman, they don’t necessarily feel they have to listen to her which is one reason why the prime minister assumes it will be easy to manoeuvre the young prince toward the throne. Koken’s short reign during which she overcame two coups is often used to support the argument against female succession because it can be claimed as a temporary aberration before power passed to the nearest male heir. Nevertheless, Koken tries to rule, even while she falls in love with the conflicted Dokyo. Her right to a romantic future, however, is also something not within her control. Many find the gossip scandalous and use it as an excuse to circumvent her authority, especially after she gives Dokyo an official title which allows them to argue she has been bewitched by him and he is merely manipulating her to gain access to power. 

Dokyo, meanwhile, is in the middle of a spiritual crisis. After 10 years of study he as reached a certain level of enlightenment and attained great powers which he intended to use for the good of mankind. He is happy to discover that Koken is also trying to do good in the world but she is, ironically, powerless while the elitist lords “indulge in debauchery”, abusing their power to enrich themselves while the people starve. He begins to fall in love with her but the palace corrupts him. He accepts a gift of a beautiful robe despite his vows of asceticism, and then later gives in to his physical desire for Koken only to plunge himself into suffering in the knowledge that he has broken his commandments. He loses his magic, but chooses to love all the same while rendered powerless to hold back Koken’s illness or to protect her from treachery. 

The pair mutually decide they cannot “abandon this happiness”, and Dokyo’s fate is sealed in the acceptance of the extremely ironic gift of golden prayer beads which once belonged to Koken’s father. He is reborn with a new name in the same way as the historical Koken was reborn as Shotoku after surviving insurrection, embracing bodily happiness while attempting to do good but battling an increasing emotional volatility. The lords continue to overrule the empress’ commands, insisting that they are really commands from Dokyo, while Dokyo’s “New Deal” involving a 2 year tax break for impoverished peasants finds support among the young radicals of the court who universally decide that they must stand behind him, protecting the ideal even if they are unable to save the man.

This troubles the elders greatly. Declaring that Dokyo has used “black magic” to bewitch the empress, they determine to eliminate him, but Dokyo never wanted power. “Power is not the final truth” he tells them, “those blindly pursuing status and power only destroy themselves”. Yet Dokyo has also destroyed himself in stepping off the path of righteousness. He damns himself by falling in love, failing to overcome emotion and embracing physical happiness in this life rather than maintaining his Buddhist teachings and doing small acts of good among the poor. Nevertheless, he is perhaps happy, and his shared happiness seems to have started a compassionate revolution among the young who resolve to work together to see that his ideal becomes a reality even in the face of entrenched societal corruption.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Gate of Hell (地獄門, Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)

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Which is the greater challenge to the social order, love or ambition, or are they in the end facets of the same destabilising forces? Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell (地獄門, Jigokumon) is, from one angle, the story of a man driven mad by “love”, reduced to the depravity of a crazed stalker betraying his samurai honour in order to affirm his status, but it also paints his need as a response to the chaos of his age along with its many repressions while the heroine is, once again, convinced that the only freedom she possesses lies in death. Yet in the midst of all that, Kinugasa ends with a triumph of nobility as the compassionate samurai restores order by rejecting the heat of raw emotion for an internalised contemplation of the greater good. 

Set in the 12th century, the film opens in revolt as two ambitious lords combine forces to attack the Sanjo Palace in what would become known as the Heiji Rebellion. The lords have attacked knowing that Taira no Kiyomori (Koreya Senda) is not in residence, having departed on a pilgrimage. Fearful for the safety of his sister and father, retainers order decoys to be sent out to distract the rebels. Kesa (Machiko Kyo), a court lady in service to the emperor’s sister, agrees to be her decoy and Morito (Kazuo Hasegawa), a minor retainer, is ordered to protect her. He manages to escort her back to his family compound where he assumes she will be safe, transgressively giving her a kiss of life, pouring water into her mouth with his own, after she has fainted during the journey. Unfortunately, Morito has miscalculated. His brother has sided with the rebels and they are not safe here. During the chaos they go their separate ways, and as soon as Kiyomori returns he puts an end to the rebellion restoring the status quo.  

Shocked at his brother’s betrayal, Morito tells him that only a coward betrays a man to whom he has sworn an oath of loyalty but he explains that he is acting not out of cowardice but self interest. He has made an individualist choice to advance his status in direct opposition to the samurai code. Morito doesn’t yet know it but he is about to do something much the same. He has fallen in love with Kesa and after meeting her again at the Gate of Hell where they are each paying their respects to the fallen, his brother among them, is determined to marry her, so much so that he asks Kiyomori directly during a public ceremony rewarding loyal retainers for their service. The other men giggle at such an inappropriate, unmanly show of emotion but the joke soon fades once another retainer anxiously points out that Kesa is already married to one of the lord’s favoured retainers. Kiyomori apologises and tries to laugh it off, but Morito doubles down, requesting that Kiyomori give him another man’s wife. 

This series of challenges to the accepted order is compounded by a necessity for politeness. Morito is mocked and derided, told that his conduct is inappropriate and embarrassing, but never definitively ordered to stop. Making mischief or hoping to defuse the situation, Kiyomori engineers a meeting between Morito and Kesa, cautioning him that the matter rests with her and should she refuse him he should take it like a man and bow out gracefully. Kesa, for her part, has only ever been polite to Morito and is extremely confused, not to mention distressed, by this unexpected turn of events. She is quite happily married to Wataru (Isao Yamagata) who is the soul of samurai honour, kind, honest, and always acting with the utmost propriety. That might be why he too treats Morito with politeness, never directly telling him to back off but refusing to engage with his inappropriate conduct. That sense of being ignored, however, merely fuels Morito’s resentment. He accuses Kesa of not leaving her husband because Wataru is of a higher rank, as if she rejects him out of snobbishness, rather than accept the fact she does not like him. 

Morito continues in destructive fashion. We see him repeatedly, break, smash, and snap things out of a sense of violent frustration with the oppressions of his age until finally forced to realise that he has “destroyed a beautiful soul” in his attempt to conquer it. “One cannot change a person’s feelings by force” Wataru advises, but is that not the aim of every rebellion, convincing others they must follow one man and not another because he is in someway stronger? The priest whose head was cut off and displayed at the Gate of Hell was killed in part because he reaped what he had sown in beheading the defeated soldiers of a previous failed revolution. Morito kills a traitor and he falls seemingly into rolling waves which transition to an unrolling scroll reminding us that rebellions ebb and flow through time and all of this is of course transient. Only Wataru, perhaps ironically, as the unambiguously good samurai is able to end the cycle, refusing his revenge in the knowledge it would do no real good. Morito is forced to live on in the knowledge of the destruction his misplaced passion has wrought, standing at his own Gate of Hell as a man now exiled from his code and renouncing the world as one unfit to live in it. 

Gate of Hell is currently streaming on BFI Player as part of the BFI’s Japan season.