Known for Acting
Wandering samurai Nemuri Kyoshiro (Raizô Ichikawa) finds a bulls-eye on his back after befriending the shogunate's tightfisted financial adviser, Asahina, who's earned the wrath of the shogun's self-indulgent daughter for cutting off her allowance. The enraged princess promptly hatches a scheme to have Asahina bumped off -- along with his protector, Kyoshiro. Shiho Fujimura also stars in this installment of the enormously popular film series.
Yoso is truly a lost classic, set in the Nara Era (710-794), from Kinugasa Teinosuke the same writer/director who gave us the recognized classic Gate of Hell (Jigokumon, 1952) & the milestone silent surrealist masterpiece A Page of Madness (Kurutta Ippeji, 1926).
[Period covered: 1582-1594]. As the film opens, the warlod Nobunaga Oda rides to Iga Ayanokuni shrine. He is asked if he thinks he has destroyed all the ninja who opposed him and answers that he suspects that there may be more. A servant brings water and tests it first. The paige dies and we hear gunshots as two ninja flee the scene. His suspicions confirmed, Nobunaga oversees the execution of captured ninja and decides that, in the future, he needs a much crueler method of execution. The daimyo Hideyoshi comes to visit.
1962 Japanese movie
When a corrupt magistrate rapes Oshima, Masa (Raizō Ichikawa) avenges her by killing the officer, becoming thereby a fugitive, haunted and grief-stricken by the fact that Oshima committed suicide. Going underground in the gambling world, perpetually hiding from the law, Masa eventually meets a young woman named Onaka, who looks exactly like Oshima. Tales having two look-alike heroines are a commonplace in Japanese period films, a plot affectation inherited from the kabuki theater. Based on a novel by Shin Hasegawa, Nakayama shichiri was already twice filmed in 1930, one version directed by Namio Ochiai, and from which less than 40 minutes survive, the other directed by Kyotaro Namiki. Both are silent films, preserved by the Makino film institute.
The adventures of a blind, gambling masseur and master swordsman. Zatoichi targets a yakuza-controlled village, because war with a neighbouring town's smaller gang is brewing.
