Sanada fuunroku (1963)

Tai Kato’s Sanada fuunroku is a striking example of the Japanese willingness to change visual and emotional tone at the drop of a hat, even in material obviously aimed at a general entertainment audience. It’s part historical saga, part basic chanbara, part ninja film, part fantasy, part love story, and part musical, all mixed together in one single mish-mash that changes its look and acting style from one scene to the next. It doesn’t approach the outright wierdness of movies like Killers on Parade from the same era, for example, because to some extent its plot actually makes sense, but the jumps from reality to fantasy and from realism to theatricality are certainly unnerving to western eyes.

Sanada was a famous general and the movie covers the time from Sekigahara in 1600 to Sanada’s death in 1615 at the siege of Osaka.

Sanada’s death in traditional chanbara fashion

The events of the siege did happen apparently in the order depicted, but don’t expect a history lesson. While Sanada was a general in command of large army forces, here he is a lonely samurai who picks up a gang of five misfits who first appear as children robbing bodies at Sekigahara. One of these is a girl, now a woman, while the others have various distinctive weapons or attitudes. To these is added a minstrel puppeteer who  plays a modern guitar to accompany his songs and after his first appearance always dresses in Portuguese clothes, complete with a ruff. These compose Sanada’s gang — hence the title which is roughly “Sanada’s Unlucky Six,” or perhaps “The Dirty Half-dozen.” When no one else will act against the Tokugawa forces besieging the castle, Sanada leads out his handful and the other soldiers spontaneously follow, giving a brief victory. But as might be expected, they are betrayed by political maneuvering and a second similar assault leads to disaster. All of this did really happen, though Sanada had several thousand men at his command each time, not this handful of commoner misfits.

But again, historical accuracy is not the point. This is immediately apparent when the urchins meet Sasuke among the dead bodies. He has mysterious powers, given to him as a baby when a meteor crashed into his parents’ house. He can read minds, he can turn his eyes blue and freeze other people in mid-action, he can float in the air, and he can appear and disappear at will. He doesn’t exactly join Sanada’s gang, but he does flit in and out as a helper at times. He is also played by Kinnosuke Nakamura, which would make us believe the movie is about him despite the title.* This was released shortly after the ninja craze struck, so Sasuke is also opposed by a ninja who can fly and disappear as well, and the movie ends with their final duel. This is apparently the same Sasuke depicted in Shinoda’s Samurai Spy,  who also aids General Sanada, and he has been a popular figure of legend, other ninja movies, and various manga.

There is a temptation to dismiss all this as childish nonsense, but the movie was actually in Kinema Junpo’s top ten, alongside quality efforts like Insect Woman, High and Low, An Actor’s Revenge, or Mr. Everyman, so serious Japanese film critics found nothing odd or amateurish about it. Part of this has to do with the look of the film, which handles its special effects effortlessly. It also has that (unnerving for westerners) willingness to slide from studio sets designed to look real, to studio sets designed to look false, to down-right theatrical sets and lighting. There are also a number of visual jokes, such as one of the gang directing troops like traffic at an intersection or the usually staid council session that turns into a brawl while the daimyo plays cat’s cradle in the distance. But those moments make it harder to tell when the visual shifts are intended to be funny as well.

Dance-stepping ninja army

Serious deliberations

Directing battlefield traffic

Hikaru Hayashi provides enough music for a standard musical, including a rock-style number for the puppeteer, a ballad for the woman in love with Sasuke, a theme song for Sanada’s Gang, and assorted other music on the soundtrack itself, plus a title theme that returns at the end and manages to be mournful and military at the same time. Yet despite the unusual amount of music, it never feels like a musical, such as Hibari Misora might be in, much less a Hollywood-style musical.  For example, we never see a standard production number when people are singing and dancing (though we do see a big disorganized party with modern music and traditional dance). Yet out of the blue the advancing ninja army breaks into a dance step. Another army under Sasuke’s spell does more traditional Japanese dances into a river where it drowns.

None of this visual theatricality was unusual in Japanese films, even when no musical numbers were involved. I have posted about many movies thus far that accessed this kind of theatricality, though Jigoku is probably the most extreme example at this date (Hausu lurks in the distance still). Even when you are familiar with a number of Japanese films of the period, it still can be more than a bit unnerving. But unlike Jigoku,  Sanada fuunroku is actually fun if you let yourself “go with the flow,” as we used to say.

* My DVD is in fact entitled Sasuke and his Comedians, though I can find nothing to indicate that title was used in Japan originally. Wikipedia calls it Brave Records of the Sanada Clan.