Tag Archives: Gosha Hideo chambara

Sword of the Beast (獣の剣)

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  • 獣の剣 (Sword of the Beast)

6/6/23 (Tues)

Gosha Hideo’s 1965 Sword of the Beast is his second feature film and first original piece, working with the same writer as Three Outlaw Samurai. He sticks with the beast image as in the previous title. As per the times, this is again a critique of the shogunate with its unfeeling ethos that requires a suppression of one’s humanity to survive.

The story opens in 1857, when the arrival of the Black Ship four years earlier (referred to in the film) has set in motion events that are about to wreak a momentous transformation in Japan. But the characters don’t know that yet, sensing only vague change in the air. When we meet the low-ranking samurai Gennosuke, he is a fugitive, having killed a clan official who rejected his proposal for democratic reform. He is being pursued by the official’s daughter, who is determined to avenge her father’s death.

All is not as it seems, however. Continue reading →

Three Outlaw Samurai (三匹の侍)

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  • 三匹の侍 (Three Outlaw Samurai)

6/4/23 (Sun)

Gosha Hideo’s 1964 Three Outlaw Samurai, his first feature-length film, was a prequel to his hugely popular television series of the same name with the same three leads. The series had already been running a year at that point and continued for around 26 episodes annually through March 1969, gathering ratings as high as 42%. (They tried a sequel with new stars the following year, but that only lasted 13 episodes.) The Japanese title, Sanbiki no Samurai, is a play on words: the usual phrase sannin (three [people] – Shichinin no Samurai is the title for Kurosawa’s Seven ~), is replaced here by sanbiki, using the counter for animals, as in Sanbiki no Kobuta (the Three Little Pigs). It’s pretty much untranslatable – a herd of samurai, maybe? – but I guess they did the best they could.

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