Samurai I Loved / Chorus of the Cicadas / Semishigeru (2006)

Semishigeru follows the unexpectedly eventful life of the young samurai Bunshiro from his teens to full adulthood. Like many of the heroes in movies based on Shuhei Fujisawa stories, Bunshiro is on the periphery of the real action in his clan, knowing little or nothing about the politics even as he is swept up in them, until he finds himself ordered to kidnap and kill the baby of the girl who had once lived next door.

Young Fuku had fallen in love with Bunshiro when he treated her finger after a snakebite by the river, but she had been forbidden to see him after his father was on the losing side in the maneuvering to determine the official heir. Father was ordered to commit hara-kiri, and Fuku came to help Bunshoro bring the body home up a long hill. Shortly afterward, Fuku is sent to Edo to serve in the daimyo’s castle, and as she grows older, he makes her his concubine. After a miscarriage, she again becomes pregnant and returns to the clan estates where she delivers a son. This sets off another round of maneuvering because an older concubine wants her child to be the heir.

None of this is shown to us, and Bunshiro knows nothing about it until rumors reach him near the end of the movie. Deprived of his father’s stipend, Bunshiro has been living in poverty with his mother until he is suddenly called to the castle, where the Chief Elder unexpectedly and without explanation restores his stipend and gives him an important job. The Chief Elder thinks long term and Bunshiro does not find out what the catch will be until after the baby is born. Knowing Bunshiro had been a childhood friend of Fuku, he is ordered to use that connection to gain entrance to her residence and take the baby. Bunshiro decides to reveal the plot and convince Fuku to take her child to safety, but the Elder also has prepared for that as well, so that once Bunshiro has supposedly distracted Fuku’s guardians, a squad of swordsmen attack. Bunshiro and his friend Ippei must fight them off while Fuku escapes.

The two only meet once more, when Fuku’s son has been officially designated the heir and she has decided to become a nun. Then she tells him that she had wanted to marry him to avoid going to Edo but couldn’t say the words aloud. Though marketed overseas as The Samurai I Loved, that title is nevertheless something of a misnomer. Fuku provides no narration and, during the time apart, she has no contact with him and knows nothing about his life in the scenes we see before their last meeting.

Like most of the movies from Fujisawa stories made in this decade, the movie avoids swordplay until the the final battle. Though Bunshiro goes through a number of swords and leaves a number of bodies, he must eventually face the enigmatic swordsman who had appeared after his first public duel and fooled him by distractions, afterward telling him to see not with his eyes but with his mind’s eye. Bunshiro does this by closing his eyes and then making a surprising and tricky change of sword hands.

There is some confusion for those familiar with other jidai-geki. No date is given. The daimyo seems never to make the yearly trip back and forth required of all clan lords, nor do we see the annual emptying out of the castle to accompany the lord to Edo. Fuku is called to serve in the “inner castle” in Edo, which would have been a term only used for the Shogun’s residence itself. Lady Kasuga, the power behind the throne for Iematsu Tokugawa, was also called Fuku, and the reported infighting among the concubines seems to mirror the events depicted in the Yagyu conspiracy films. However, bits and pieces of history can always inspire fiction in completely different settings and that may be the case here. Any suggestion of grander plots may simply be coincidental and should not bother the casual viewer.

The original story had been previously adapted as a TV mini-series in 2003, and writer/director Mitsuo Kurotsuchi’s approach is episodic, as any movie must be that spans so many years. Though no photographer credit is translated, it is a beautiful movie.

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The clan lives between the sea and the mountains, which provides gorgeous views of the ocean, rivers, and forests to go with the rice fields. Interiors are shot almost completely with the low camera position, varied with close-ups, and outdoor scenes take full advantage of the setting. There are times when we seem to pause merely for pretty pictures, but that can be forgiven.

What should not be forgiven is the ending. After a restrained, subtly-acted final meeting for Bunshiro and Fuku, the movie launches into a long montage of flashbacks accompanied by the syrupy theme music that has been already used numerous times throughout the movie. That crosses the line that Yamada had refused to cross in his trilogy of Fujisawa adaptations and tries to force the tears to flow. As such, it seems much closer to When the Last Sword is Drawn than to Sword of Desperation, which shares a similar story of a swordsman disgraced and then mysteriously returned to favor because he might be needed for a dangerous fight later. The old chanbara had depicted its fair share of true love thwarted by clan politics, but had never spelled it out for an audience that was assumed to understand what they had already seen. Perhaps it is an indication that 21st century mainstream audiences were assumed to need more prompting to know how to feel, perhaps it is just a director’s choice. Nevertheless, that unnecessarily sentimental epilogue skews our entire memory of the rest of what had been an otherwise subtle and unsentimental  movie. If you can stop about two minutes before the credits roll, you will be left with the memory of a fine movie.