Everything about Samurai Cinema totally explained
While earlier
samurai period pieces were more dramatic rather than action-based,
samurai movies post
World War II have become more action-based, with darker and more violent characters. Post-war Samurai epics tended to portray psychologically or physically scarred warriors.
Akira Kurosawa, Japan's most famous director, stylised and exaggerated death and violence in
samurai epics. His Samurai, and many other portrayed in film were solitary figures, more often concerned with concealing their martial abilities, rather than bragging of them. roughly equating to western
swashbuckler films.
Chanbara is a sub category of
jidaigeki, which equates to
period drama.
Jidaigeki may refer to a story set in an historical period, though not necessarily dealing with a samurai character or depicting swordplay.
Historically, the genre is usually set during the
Tokugawa era (1600-1868), the
samurai film focuses on the end of an entire way of life for the Samurai, many of the films deal with masterless
ronin, or samurai dealing with changes to their status resulting from a changing society.
Samurai films were constantly made into the early 1970s, but by then, overexposure on television, the aging of the big stars of the genre, and the continued decline of the mainstream Japanese film industry put a halt to the most of the production of this often startlingly original, artistic genre.
Samurai film directors
Akira Kurosawa is the best known to western audiences, and similarly has directed the samurai films best known in the West. He directed
Seven Samurai,
Rashomon,
Throne of Blood,
Yojimbo and many others. He had a long association with
Toshirō Mifune arguably Japan's most famous actor. Mifune himself had a production company that produced Samurai epics, often with him starring . Two of Kurosawa's samurai movies were based on the works of
William Shakespeare,
Throne of Blood (
Macbeth) and
Ran (
King Lear). A number of his films were re made by Italy and the United States as
westerns, or as action films set in other contexts. His film,
Seven Samurai is one of the most important touchstones of the genre and the most well-known outside of Japan. It also illustrates some of the conventions of samurai film in that the main characters are ronin, masterless
unemployed samurai, free to act as their
conscience dictates. Importantly, these men tend to deal with their problems with their swords and are very skilled at doing so. It also shows the helplessness of the peasantry and the distinction between the two classes.
Masaki Kobayashi directed the films
Harakiri and
Samurai Rebellion, both cynical films based on flawed loyalty to the clan.
Kihachi Okamoto films focus on violence in a particular fashion. In particular in his films
Samurai Assassin,
Kill! and
Sword of Doom. The latter is particularly violent, the main character engaging in combat for a lengthy 7 minutes of film at the end of the movie. His characters are often estranged from their environments, and their violence is a flawed reaction to this.
Popular characters in Samurai films
Zatoichi
At least 26 films were made about the blind swordsman,
Zatoichi. A burly masseur with short hair, he's a skilled swordsman who fights using only his hearing. While less known in the West, he's arguably the most famous
chanbara character in Japan.
Crimson Bat
Four movies were made about another blind samurai, the
Crimson Bat. Her character was a blind female sword fighter, and made in response to the huge success of Zatoichi .
Kyoshiro Nemuri
This character was a wandering warrior plagued by the fact that he was fathered in less than honorable circumstance by a Portuguese
priest and a Japanese mother.
Miyamoto Musashi
A number of films were also made about
Miyamoto Musashi, a famed historical warrior and swordsman, including a three movie trilogy about his life, starring
Toshirō Mifune.
Lone Wolf and Cub
Lone Wolf and Cub, the tale of a Samurai traveling Japan with his son in a pram (which is armed and on occasion used in combat) was made into a series of six movies known as
The Baby Cart Series. The films, in chronological order, are:,,,,, and . The entire series has been dubbed, re-scored, re-edited and released in the West as the
Shogun Assassin DVD series. The English dubbed version of the final
Baby Cart film will be available in July of 2008.
Sanjuro/The Samurai/The Ronin with No Name
Sanjuro is the wandering ronin character appearing in two of Kurosawa's films,
Yojimbo and
Sanjuro. The character is nameless, but when required gives the name Sanjuro (which actually means "thirtysomething"), and then makes up a surname. Another nameless wandering ronin called
Yojimbo ("Bodyguard") in
Incident at Blood Pass is also basically the same character. He also appears in the
Zatoichi film
Zatoichi meets Yojimbo (
1970).
The character is sometimes referred to as "the ronin with no name", as a reference to Clint Eastwood's character "the man with no name", a western version inspired by the samurai character.
As was the case with Eastwood, some of the other roles that Toshirō Mifune played after the two Kurosawa movies are basically the same character.
Themes
There are a number of themes that occur in Samurai film plots. Many feature roaming masterless samurai, seeking work or a place in society. Others are period historical tales of true characters. Others show tales of clan loyalty. The Zatoichi character was re-made as
Blind Fury in the United States, starring
Rutger Hauer as a blind swordsman living in the modern US. Most recently,
The Last Samurai, the story being loosely based on the true historical French officer
Jules Brunet assisting Japanese Samurai in rebellion against the Emperor.
List of notable Samurai films
Actors
Ken Watanabe
Toshiro Mifune
Beat Takeshi
Shintaro Katsu
Nakadai TatsuyaFurther Information
Get more info on 'Samurai Cinema'.
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