A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #311: Hideo Gosha’s Sword of the Beast.

It just hap­pens to be coin­ci­dence that I was read­ing the Hagakure when this movie came in on my hold list at the library.

Naoshige once said, “The Bushi­do sig­ni­fies des­per­ate death. Sev­er­al tens of sane samu­rais could not kill a sin­gle samu­rai [who burns with this mad death].”

Sane men of calm­ly com­posed mind can­not accom­plish a great enter­prise. You have only to get wild­ly crazy to the point of death. The moment dis­cre­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion min­gle with your Bushi­do, you will sure­ly hes­i­tate and lag behind your enter­prise.

To the Bushi­do, loy­al­ty and fil­ial duty will nat­u­ral­ly fol­low from your mad­ness. Because in this des­per­ate death, both of these qual­i­ties dwell in your actions.

If ever there was a samu­rai who embod­ies the des­per­ate death of Bushi­do, the char­ac­ter of Gen­no­suke in Sword of the Beast is that man. His tale takes place as the Toku­gawa shogu­nate was dwin­dling, on the cusp of the Mei­ji Restora­tion [when the posi­tion of samu­rai was abol­ished] and soon after Com­modore Per­ry’s ships end­ed Japan’s long self-imposed cul­tur­al iso­la­tion. Now that you’ve got a bit of his­tor­i­cal con­text and a bit of the cul­tur­al phi­los­o­phy that dri­ves the actions of the char­ac­ters in the film, it becomes much more than a hack-and-slash samu­rai film.

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The recur­rent theme of human bes­tial­i­ty [not that kind, sicko but I bet that ups my search refer­rals] is near­ly con­stant, while Gen­no­suke might behave as a beast at one moment, a breath lat­er he is an hon­or­able samu­rai. At oth­er points through­out the film oth­er char­ac­ters behave in sim­i­lar man­ners. Juro­ta, the gold seek­er, refus­es to save his wife when she falls into the hands of ban­dit-prospec­tors; opt­ing instead to remain loy­al to his clan. The same prospec­tors lat­er rape anoth­er woman on the moun­tain and when Juro­ta’s clan final­ly shows up, they are bent on killing every­one on the moun­tain, includ­ing Juro­ta and his wife.

The char­ac­ters believe that gold will ele­vate them, but instead it is what caus­es their bes­tial behav­ior. Gen­no­suke is actu­al­ly con­vinced that he is turn­ing into a wolf. Essen­tial­ly what we get is a dis­tort­ed form of Bushi­do that deem­pha­sizes the clan-loy­al­ty in favor of a more West­ern indi­vid­ual loy­al­ty. After Gen­no­suke’s betray­al by his own clan, he rapid­ly adapts this war­rior code through­out his ronin and by the end of the film has man­aged a makeshift bal­ance between his new path and his old Bushi­do. His failed ambi­tion is mir­rored in Juro­ta’s efforts, and Juro­ta’s pres­ence on the moun­tain acts as the cat­a­lyst to pre­cip­i­tate Gen­no­suke’s inter­nal redemp­tion.

The use of flash­back does strange things to the con­ti­nu­ity, because the first few aren’t sig­naled very well. Even­tu­al­ly they turn a bit more stan­dard trick and I won­der if this was anoth­er delib­er­ate cor­re­la­tion between beast and man, since the ambigu­ous sequences come deep in the beast phase of Gen­no­suke’s sto­ry. His adapt­ed Bushi­do would appear very mod­ern to post-WWII Japan­ese, and Gen­no­suke’s facil­i­ty at incor­po­rat­ing it into his life mir­rors Japan’s sim­i­lar facil­i­ty which allowed them to regroup as an eco­nom­ic pow­er so quick­ly after their sur­ren­der.

I can’t believe I’ve not talked about the fenc­ing yet! It is most excel­lent, very raw, at times grace­ful and at times clum­sy, neces­si­ties depend­ing on ter­rain and num­ber of oppo­nents. Gen­no­suke is pret­ty much a mas­ter of the one-stroke kill, and while the deaths are often ham­my, I want­ed to see more sweet slic­ing action.

Cri­te­ri­on Essay by Chris D.
Cri­te­ri­on Essay by Patrick Macias
French review [in French, duh] with screen cap­tures.