New Morning of Billy the Kid / Biri za kiddo no atarashii yoake (1986)

A man with a gunbelt and John Wayne’s side-turned bandana walks across a black and white Monument Valley while the radio plays the voice of the American president vowing to track down and destroy “The Gang”* that has been terrorizing the world (identified on the wanted poster as Sharlott Rampling, Hurry Callahan,  Leonid Breznef, and …

Secret Sword / Hiken (1963)

For many samurai, the sudden and apparently permanent peace that settled over the country after 1615 was a disappointment rather than a relief. The ending of more than a century of war meant the end of any opportunity for advancement through battle deeds and, for the young men, it also meant the end of excitement. …

Musashi Miyamoto (1973)

The story of Musashi Miyamoto has been one of the most popular subjects of Japanese film-making, with versions as early as 1908 and as late as 2019. Since Eiji Yoshikawa’s popular serial/novel appeared in 1935-39, however, almost all film versions have used that as their source material. As Yoshikawa’s original was about 4000 pages, it …

Musashi Miyamoto (1944)

Mizoguchi’s Musashi Miyamoto, released in 1944, follows the standard Miyamoto story popularized in the 1930s from the fight at the Ichijoji Temple to his final duel with Sasaki, so it covers familiar territory for chanbara audiences. This is roughly the same territory as part III of Inagaki’s fifties trilogy with Mifune and part V of …

Kojiro / Sasaki Kojiro (1967)

I don't think any major director filmed as many remakes of his own movies as did Inagaki. In addition to his remakes of Musashi Myamoto and Rickshaw Man,  Kojiro is basically a remake of Inagaki's 1950-51 trilogy on the life of Kojiro Sasaki, Japan's second-greatest swordsman. Given that we have only a single movie condensed …

Daredevil in the Castle / Tale of Osaka Castle / Osaka jo monogatari (1961)

Now and then you come across a movie for which you have such high expectations that you may over-react when those expections are not met.  Starring Toshiro Mifune, with Yoshiko Kuga, Kyoko Kagawa, and Isuzu Yamada among others and directed by Inagaki, Daredevil in the Castle promises so much more than it delivers, but it …

Secret of the Urn / Tange Sazen: Hien iaigiri (1966)

One of the most popular characters in Japanese films has been Tange Sazen (as he insists on being called in this version), the one-eyed, one-armed ronin. How he is depicted in his movies has been a good sign of the mood of the times, with the character usually featuring a number of comic traits.  By …

Fugitive from the Past / Straits of Hunger/ Kiga kaikyo (1964/5*)

I have occasionally commented that a large number of Japanese films seem to  illustrate the idea that "no good deed goes unpunished," but none does so more explicitly and complexly than Tomu Uchida's Fugitive from the Past. In 1957, a successful businessman (Rentaro Mikuni) makes a major charitable donation. Yae, a prostitute in Tokyo (Sachiko …

The Great Duel / Odeiri (1964)

In a sense, Odeiri is the quintessential chanbara of the mid sixties. Artistically, there are many better movies in the genre, but no movie I have found so completely combines all the cultural and stylistic developments of the genre at its date. This is, of course, another way to say that Odeiri doen’t have an […]

Revenge / Vengeance / Adauchi (1964)

Tadashi Imai and Kinnosuke Nakamura had earlier collaborated  in Bushido on a detailed exposure of the cynical emptiness of samurai code, and in this follow-up they push that criticism about as far as it can possibly be pushed, culminating in one of the most ethically appalling swordfights in all of Japanese film. As so often …