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— by Carl Davis
The chanbara, or samurai, genre has been a staple of Japanese cinema ever since Akira Kurosawa created the modern samurai movie with his 1954 epic, "The Seven Samurai." The genre has continued to thrive in the five decades since that film's release — but until now, it was rarely acknowledged outside of Japan. With the growing availability and popularity of chanbara on DVD in the U.S., however, fans no longer need rely on Quentin Tarantino's heady blend of Asian action genres, a la "Kill Bill," in order to get a samurai fix. Unconvinced? Consider that Takashi Miike's phantasmagorical samurai film, "Izo," screened at festivals worldwide this year — to nearly uniform acclaim — while the chanbara aficionados at Criterion are poised to release a DVD box set, "Rebel Samurai: Sixties Swordplay Classics," featuring four previously unavailable titles from the genre's golden age: Masahiro Shinoda's "Samurai Spy" (1965), Hideo Gosha's "Sword of The Beast" (1965), Masaki Kobayashi's masterful "Samurai Rebellion" (1967) and Kihachi Okamoto's aptly titled "Kill!" (1968). Here, then, is a primer on one of film's most vigorous and beloved genres.
 "Azumi" (2003)
Ryuhei Kitamura, one of Japan's hottest directors, took it upon himself to re-imagine the chanbara genre with this over-the-top action flick based on a popular manga title and set shortly after the brutal Battle of Sekigahara in the 17th century. Azumi (Japanese pop idol Aya Ueto) is a young orphaned girl taken in, along with nine other children, by the sensei, Gessai, who intends to raise them as deadly assassins in order to prevent a violent civil war. The children grow up quickly, with Azumi and her best friend Nachi (Shun Oguri) displaying the strongest abilities. But before they can venture back out into the world, Gessai puts them to the ultimate test, pairing the teens into groups of two with orders to kill or be killed. It's a hard lesson, but a necessary one, as the survivors' mission is to do away with murderous warlords. With a beautiful, deadly heroine, a succession of twisted, evil villains and some truly amazing fights, "Azumi" rocks!
"The Twilight Samurai" (2002)
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Director Yoji Yamada's stoic film is set in the last days of the samurai, when the warriors were no longer needed due to a shift in national politics and the emperor's desire to modernize the country. Seibei (Hiroyuki Sanada) is a samurai, but with the death of his wife he was forced to pawn his sword to help support his family. Instead of fighting bandits or drinking sake with his clan, he's now an accountant who rushes home from work to take care of his young daughters. As an aging samurai with nothing but a wooden sword, Seibei is an embarrassment to the clan. Ultimately he is forced to undertake a suicide mission — to execute one of his fellow samurai, driven mad by his daughter's death. But what good is this last chance at saving face in a society where honor no longer matters?
"Zatôichi" (1962-1989)
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The figure of Zatôichi, the blind swordsman, is a cultural icon in Japan, having appeared in numerous films and television series over the past 30 years. The one thing that these various incarnations all have in common is that they starred the legendary Japanese actor Shintaro Katsu as the titular anti-hero. The sheer
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number of films in the series can seem daunting for a beginner, but the following three films make for the perfect crash course on the master swordsman's adventures. "New Tale of Zatôichi" (1963) is the third film in the series and features the master returning to his village to defend it from a gang of marauders and
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reflect on his life. "Zatôichi Meets Yojimbo" pits Ichi against an aggressive yojimbo (bodyguard) played by Toshiro Mifune in a role identical to that of his iconic turn in Akira Kurosawa's classic, "Yojimbo." Finally, "Zatôichi," the 26th film in the series and the second directed by Katsu himself, portrays Ichi in the last years of his life, but still a force for good in the world. (The great Takeshi Kitano directed and starred in "Zatôichi" (2003), an update of the legendary series.)
"Lady Snowblood" (1973)
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Quentin Tarantino took a lot of inspiration — as well as the title song "Flower of Carnage" — for his "Kill Bill" opus from this tale of a female samurai hell-bent on revenge. (Sound familiar?) Before you say Uma Thurman's Beatrix Kiddo, it's actually Lucy Liu's character, O-Ren Ishii, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Yuki (Meiko Kaji). The offspring of a violent rape after her parents are attacked by a band of thieves and left for dead, Yuki is raised solely as an instrument of vengeance. Trained from an early age in the art of the sword and the ways of assassination, she embarks at the age of 20 on her life's mission: to kill the men who wronged her family.
"Lone Wolf and Cub" ("Sword of Vengeance," "Baby Cart at the River Styx," "Baby Cart to Hades," "Baby Cart in Peril," "Baby Cart in the Land of Demons," "White Heaven in Hell") (1972-1973)
This six-volume film series is based on Kazuo Koike's massive, groundbreaking manga epic of the same name and follows the exploits of assassin-for-hire Ogami Itto (Tomisaburo Wakayama) and his young son, Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa), who wander the Japanese countryside with a booby-trapped baby carriage and a banner proclaiming "Expertise and Child for Rent." Itto was a chief executioner before being framed for his own wife's murder by his rival, Lord Retsudo, and made an outcast along with his motherless son. As the wolf of Lone Wolf and Cub, Itto offers his blade to the highest bidder in his quest for revenge. The series boasts several memorable set pieces throughout the series, including a run-in with a clan of female ninja, the amazing battle with the three "Gods of Death" and Itto's spectacular battle with the Yagyu clan on a snow-covered mountain. Alas, audiences never got to see a final reckoning between Ogami Itto and Lord Retsudo, as Koike didn't complete his massive manga until three years after the final film was released.
"Sword Of Doom" (1966)
The written inspiration for the action-packed "Sword Of Doom" actually predates the now internationally known manga craze, drawing instead from a long-running newspaper serial, "Daibosatsu Toge" ("Great Buddha Pass"), which debuted way back in 1913. While not the first live-action version of the comic, "Sword Of Doom" is the first to try and encapsulate all 30 years of the strip into a single film. Due to the film's compressed storyline, we're treated to key moments in the lives of merciless swordsman Ryunosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai) and Hyoma Utsuki (Yuzo Kayama), the young samurai who, with the help of his teacher Toranosuke Shimada (Toshiro Mifune), vows to defeat him.
"Harakiri" (1962)
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Japanese director Masaki ("Samurai Rebellion") Kobayashi's masterpiece, "Harakiri" (ritual suicide by self-inflicted disembowelment) is set in 17th-century Japan. An age of peace has left thousands of samurai out of work, penniless and disgraced. Impoverished samurai often begged for the privilege of committing Harakiri on a wealthy landowner's property, thus maintaining their honor, but they would usually be offered an alternative to death, i.e., food, work or lodging. When Hanshiro, an elderly warrior, seeks to commit harakiri on the estate of Lord Iyi, he is told the tale of a young samurai named Motome who sought to do the same and was forced by the lord's clansmen to go through with the act. What follows is a scathing critique of "bushido," the supposedly noble samurai's code, delivered in a gripping tale of honor and revenge, featuring one of the greatest swordfights ever put on film.
"Yojimbo" (1961)
Perhaps inspired by the metamorphosis of his own "Seven Samurai" into the gun-slinging Hollywood remake, "The Magnificent Seven," Akira Kurosawa deliberately borrows elements of the American Western. Toshiro Mifune is a nameless (he calls himself Sanjuro, or "Mulberry Bush") wandering samurai who comes upon a small town torn apart by two warring gangs. No longer restrained by the samurai's code, the unemployed Sanjuro decides to have some fun and make a quick buck by renting himself out as a yojimbo ("bodyguard") to each faction — only to spoil their plans time and again. All is going well until the arrival of the pistol-packing Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai) signals the beginning of the bloody end.
"Samurai Trilogy" ("Musashi Miyamoto," "Duel at Ichijoji Temple," "Duel at Ganryu Island") (1955-1956)
Japanese film icon Toshiro Mifune portrays the greatest samurai who ever lived, the "Sword Saint" Musashi Miyamoto, in director Hiroshi Ingaki's amazing three-part epic based on a novel by Eiji Yoshikawa about Musashi's life. The film follows Musashi from his earliest days until his twilight years when he set down his sword and picked up the pen to write the highly influential tome, The Book Of The Five Rings. The transformation Mifune undergoes between the first two installments, from a young man filled with rage and ambition to a talented swordsman on a quest to find his inner warrior, is staggering. As Musashi continues to study and train throughout Japan, racking up an impressive body count along the way, he also attracts the affections and attentions of two very different women. A delicate balance between samurai action and sweeping melodrama is maintained throughout the three films, comprising one utterly unforgettable trilogy.
"The Seven Samurai" (1954)
Akira Kurosawa was a master filmmaker whose legacy lives on not just in his own films, but in the films of those he inspired. In the American Western, the European "Spaghetti Western," or even in the "Star Wars" saga, Kurosawa's influence can be seen onscreen everywhere. But nowhere is it more apparent than in the genre he helped popularize: the modern Samurai film. "The Seven Samurai" stands head and shoulders above all others as not just one of the greatest samurai films, but one of the greatest films of all time. Period. Kurosawa, who took much of his own inspiration from the West, was not always a popular filmmaker in his native Japan, but the overwhelmingly positive response to "The Seven Samurai" was instantaneous. Overnight, dry, old-school costume dramas were obsolete, replaced by dramatic epics full of swordplay and action. Set during the twilight of the samurai, when the caste of noble warriors was facing extinction due to changing politics and modern weaponry, a town plagued by marauding bandits looks to a group of wandering samurai for help. Rather than paying their saviors handsomely, the villagers can only offer payment of a handful of rice a day. The samurai, of course, accept. While Kurosawa was acidly commenting on problems inherent in the old system and the need for flexibility and adaptation, his social commentary often takes a backseat to his cast of dynamic characters and the full-scale battles that continue to inspire filmmakers and delight audiences a half-century after their creation.
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Photos: The Criterion Collection
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