Blood End / Tengu-to (1969)

Set primarily in 1864, Blood End is another of the dramatized depictions of a confusing period of Japanese history, the decade before the Shogunate finally collapsed that occupied so many Japanese film-makers in the late 1960s. Here we meet the tengu-to, one of the last and most idealistic of the failed rebellions. Tatsuya Nakadai plays …

Samurai Assassin / Samurai (1965)

Based on a famous incident in Japanese history, Samurai Assassin assumes a certain amount of historical knowledge on the part of its audience, but don't let that put you off. Most of the movie is fiction. After the Americans arrived, the new Tokugawa Shogun was a child, so Chief Elder Ii actually ran the country …