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Musashi and Jotarō arrive at a mountain pass above a fortress, in which lives the elderly martial arts master Sekushusai Munetoshi (Sir Yagyu). Musashi declares that it is here that he will put his sword to the test. Meanwhile, Yoshioka Denshichirō (Seijurō’s brother) and his associates arrive to challenge Sekushusai to a match, but a retainer informs them that the elderly patriarch doesn’t receive challengers. The delegation is offended, but peacefully withdraws.
The retainer informs the patriarch that Denshichirō intends to return tomorrow to challenge the old man face to face. Sekushusai is angered by the young man’s rejection of his “polite refusal.” He asks Otsu, who is living in his house, to visit the delegation and decline the challenge on his behalf, and she agrees. He then takes out his katana, holds a peony flower in a pot upright, and cuts it neatly at the stem.
The next day, Otsu presents the peony to Denshichirō as a gift and relays the patriarch’s message that he has a “headcold,” and thus can’t properly entertain the young man as a visitor. Denshichirō scorns this gift. On the way back from the meeting, Otsu gives the flower to a little girl, Docha, at a local inn.
Docha shows the flower to Musashi, who (unbeknownst to Otsu) is a guest at the inn. Examining the stem, Musashi is amazed by the perfect angle of the cut. He asks Docha to hold the flower upright and he, using his katana, makes a second cut in the stem, which sends the terrified little girl running out of the room screaming. Musashi resolves to meet with Sekushusai to “bring him to his knees with my swordsmanship.”
Jotarō arrives at the patriarch’s castle with a letter from Musashi and the cut stem of the peony, and the retainer who reads the letter is astonished at the two identically neat cuts. He and three of his colleagues decide to write to Musashi to invite him to join them at Shinkage Hall to discuss swordsmanship there. Meanwhile, as Jotarō waits in the courtyard, a black dog enters, threatening him. Jotarō returns to Musashi with the men’s letter of reply and with cuts on his face.
Musashi arrives at Shinkage Hall at the appointed hour and the four top students of Sekushusai greet him amiably. They ask him how he knew that the master’s cut of the peony stem was perfect, and he answers, “By intuition.” One of the men takes umbrage at this response, and chastises Musashi for his “evasion.” The ronin, now angry, defends his reliance on intuition. Suddenly, the squealing of a dog is heard in the courtyard. The men identify the sound as made by the patriarch’s favorite pet, Taro, and rush outside. Musashi follows them.
They find the black dog, Taro, lying dead as Jotarō brandishes a sword close by, bragging of having revenged himself on the dog for having scratched his face at their earlier meeting. The four students of the patriarch want to punish the boy, but Musashi declares that he and the boy will fight them together. All the men draw their swords.
The mournful sound of a distant flute is heard. The ronin orders the boy to run away, and Musashi hides in the grass as the men, searching through the castle grounds, cry out that he’s a coward. Musashi again hears the sound of the flute, and realizes it must be Otsu.
Musashi approaches the patriarch’s gate. He reads the inscriptions posted there, and suddenly realizes that, since the patriarch is living a peaceful life in communion with nature, there would be no honor in challenging such a man. However, the patriarch has noted the ronin’s presence, and has sent Otsu to deal with the intruder. She recognizes Musashi and rushes toward him, but he runs away and hides. Jotarō calls out to the ronin, but he flees.
Matahachi, Musashi’s friend from his old village, is seen employed as a slave-like laborer in the construction of Fushimi Castle. During a meal break, he goes off alone on the side of a hill to eat. Suddenly, a man appears on the road above Matahachi, being chased by a mob. The dying man gives him a bag and a scroll, and Matahachi flees. Finding a safe hiding place, he discovers to his delight that the bag is full of money, and that the scroll, which illustrates swordfighting techniques, is addressed to a samurai named Sasaki Kojirō.
On a ship at sea, two men count their money. One of them, Toji, tells a samurai strutting on the deck, Sasaki Kojirō, that he’s from Kyoto, and Sasaki reveals that he’s going there to challenge Seijurō, the head of the Yoshioka school. The second man, Yokogawa, tells him that Toji is an important member of that school, but Sasaki continues to belittle it. Running out of patience, Sasaki, with one swift stroke, cuts off Toji’s topknot, humiliating him.
At Kyoto, Okō goes to the harbor to greet Toji as his ship docks, but since he’s wearing a head scarf to hide the fact that his topknot is missing, she at first doesn’t recognize him. The embarrassed Toji brings Okō to a secluded spot, where she removes his scarf and exposes his bald head, much to her amusement. Discovering the box he’s carrying containing the dōjō’s funds, she points out that they could live lives of luxury together with all that money. Toji is horrified by the suggestion that they abscond with the funds, but she just laughs.
Back at the dōjō, Seijurō tells Akemi that he paid Okō a good price for her body, and insists that she sleep with him. She calls him a “despicable man.” She tries to escape, but he rapes her again.
Running out of the house, Akemi wanders to the sea, calling out Takezō’s (Musashi’s) name. Obaba and Gon, who happen to be resting nearby, hear her say the word “Takezō.” She sends Gon down to the water’s edge to question the young woman about the ronin, whom she, Obaba, is still seeking in order to avenge her family’s honor.
As Akemi walks into the ocean to drown herself, Gon follows close behind to save her. Obaba, horrified, cries out for help. The men in the crowd rush down to the sea to rescue the couple. They return with the unconscious bodies of Gon and Akemi, but only the latter survives, much to Obaba’s distress.
Seijurō, meanwhile, receives the written message from Musashi requesting a match. The letter further instructs him to publicly post a reply to his challenge at the Gojo Bridge during the first week of the New Year.
The men from the dōjō – assuming that Toji and Okō, whom they realize have stolen the school’s funds, will try to escape by water – order a passing boat on the river to stop so they can search it for the fugitive couple. However, Sasaki is the only one they encounter. He mocks the search party and challenges the men to a fight, easily killing three of them.
Seijurō arrives at the scene on horseback and, noting Sasaki’s superior strength, orders his men to stop their attack. Sasaki, spotting Seijurō, runs towards him with his sword drawn, but the latter deftly dismounts before the samurai can touch him with his sword, and Sasaki compliments him on this “exquisitely done” move. The Young Master of the dōjō recognizes Sasaki and addresses him by name, and the latter puts away his sword. Seijurō brings Sasaki back to the dōjō and insists that the samurai be treated as an honored guest.
At the same establishment at which the boy Jotarō used to work, Matahachi orders a drink. He is interrupted by a crude ronin, Akakabe Yasoma, who joins him and begins to talk politics. That night Matahachi and Akakabe walk home together, drunk. The latter encounters Akemi, who has gone mad and continually calls Takezō’s name. The brutal samurai attempts to rape her, but Sasaki, on an evening walk, suddenly appears and frees Akemi from his grip. The frightened girl runs into the arms of Matahachi, who recognizes her.
Matahachi accuses Sasaki of improper intentions toward Akemi, and introduces himself to the dumfounded ronin as “Sasaki Kojirō.” To “prove” his identity, he proudly produces the scroll addressed to the swordsman. The latter, smiling, reveals himself as the real Sasaki. The terrified Matahachi begs his forgiveness and hands over the scroll, explaining how he accidentally obtained it. Sasaki throws the scroll into the river, as he has long since surpassed his master in swordsmanship and no longer belongs to any “school” but his own.
Meanwhile, Seijurō’s aide reminds him that he must soon decide the time and place at which he is to duel Musashi. A messenger reveals that Seijurō’s brother Denshichirō plans to be elsewhere during New Year’s week, leaving him to fight Musashi without help. The Young Master summons the whole school and informs them that the match will take place at Rendai-ji Temple in North Kyoto on the ninth day of the first month, and he orders them to publish this information on a placard at Gojo Bridge. His right-hand man, Hayashi, leaves on a mission to try to persuade Denshichirō to change his mind and join the fight in defense of the school.
Musashi, all alone at a campfire at night, vows, after defeating Seijurō, to eventually reach his “peak” by challenging Sir Yagyu and winning. Obaba finds Musashi and draws her sword ineffectually against the ronin. Irrationally, she blames him for Gon’s death, which he is saddened to learn of. In her ensuing fight with Miyamoto, the old woman loses consciousness. Leaving her in an abandoned boat, he departs for his duel with the Yoshioka School.
At dawn on the bridge, Musashi reads the placard placed there by the school. He’s soon reunited there with Akemi, whose sanity has been restored, and with Jotarō, who enthusiastically greets his master. However, Otsu, who had accompanied the boy, is dismayed to see Musashi talking to Akemi and, thinking he is in love with the girl, leaves in tears.
Sasaki arrives and approaches the Yoshioka men, advising Seijurō to call off the fight because he cannot win. The samurai even offers to take down the placard, as it would be an act of dishonor for anyone from the school itself to do so. The other men are scandalized, but Seijurō very politely declines the offer, since his decision has been made and can’t be rescinded.
On the day of the match, Seijurō orders his men to remain some distance from the match site, and he is accompanied to the temple grounds only by his aide, Tamihachi. Musashi appears and assumes a fighting stance. Tamihachi runs to the others to tell them what is happening, and they rush to the temple to help the Young Master.
Seijurō, now alone, lunges at Musashi, but the latter dispatches his enemy with a single stroke aimed at his adversary’s left arm, and runs away. The students arrive to find their master seriously wounded. Seijurō begs his men to cut off his arm to relieve his agony, but when none of them steps forward to do this, Sasaki himself “amputates” the arm with his katana.
Denshichirō finally arrives, though too late to help his brother. Seijurō rises and with great difficulty attempts to walk, but collapses. Obaba tells Otsu that all this misery is the fault of Musashi.
Miyamoto, from a hiding place, witnesses all this. He says that though he shouldn’t have fought the Yoshioka clan, he doesn’t regret having done so. He promises that this will not be the end, but rather the beginning of his quest to perfect his skills. He turns and walks into the distance towards the setting sun.
This is the most plot-heavy installment in the Musashi series so far, as proven by the (necessarily) long synopsis above. But the most interesting moments in this movie seem to happen, as it were, between the major plot events. In a sense, this film is less about Musashi’s attempt to perfect his “art,” than it is about the tragedy of a man who had inherited a distinguished swordfighting school, but proves unable, due both to circumstances and fatal flaws in his own character, to survive the challenge that Musashi represents. And it’s very strange that Seijurō – in many ways the most neurotic and unpleasant character of the entire series, and a rapist to boot – should prove so compelling a personality, to the point that he almost rivals the “hero,” Musashi, in this respect.
It was a shrewd decision on Uchida’s part to cast Ehara Shinjirō (whose surname is sometimes spelled “Ebara”) in this crucial role. In 1956, the young actor had appeared in Uchida’s “William Tell” adaptation, Rebellion from Below (Gyakushu gokumon toride) – which I have not yet seen – and in the following year, he received top-billing in Uchida’s The Eleventh Hour (Dotanba).
In the latter film, he plays a young would-be coal miner who, just a few days before he would have been scheduled to start work, is given a brief tour of the mine by a veteran worker (Shimura Takashi) and finds himself trapped with the others in a massive cave-in. Because Uchida chose to emphasize the dilemmas and conflicts of the rescuers rather than those of the trapped men, Ehara’s role is necessarily less prominent than his star billing would suggest. Yet in the brief screen time he is allotted, he does a very fine job at conveying his character’s primal terror in the face of an absurd situation.
In this movie, Uchida uses Ehara’s ability to convey fear effectively in his portrayal of a man burdened by inherited responsibilities he can’t possibly handle. Seijurō is like an actor with stage fright, miserably inhibited and unsure of his role. Not quite knowing how to respond to Musashi’s challenge, the Young Master goes to the dōjō to practice with another member of the school by fighting with bokken (wooden swords). Sasaki, listening in the next room, is unimpressed, noting to himself that the wooden swords sound hollow, and thus decides that it wouldn’t be worth his while to stay at this dōjō for very long.
The “hollow” swords are a nice metaphor for the hollowness of Seijurō’s authority. Even his rape of Akemi seems driven less by lust than by a compulsive need to assert the masculine authority he otherwise lacks – Okō had earlier cruelly taunted him for not being strong enough to dominate Akemi – with predictably disastrous results.
In a later scene, Seijurō in the middle of the night visits the family shrine. In his mind, the tormented man hears both Musashi’s challenge and Akemi’s cries of anguish, as if both are reproaching him for his failures. His aide Hayashi enters and urges him to get some rest. But the Young Master shares with Hayashi his conviction that, though he’s been involved with the dōjō since he was a toddler, there’s some essential quality lacking in himself that he can’t transcend. It should be noted that this scene, as well as others that take place at the dōjō, are some of the most visually interesting of the whole film, with their dramatic use of shadows, so it’s clear that Uchida was particularly invested creatively in these sequences.
In the end, the Young Master manages to display the nobility that fate, represented by Musashi, calls upon him to demonstrate, even at the cost of his own life and the downfall of his school. At Gojo Bridge, Sasaki, predicting Seijurō’s defeat, generously offers to take down the placard advertising the forthcoming duel between the Young Master and the ronin, in effect “canceling” the duel without the school losing face. (Sasaki can do this because he is a neutral party who supports neither Seijurō nor Musashi.) But the Young Master politely declines this offer: he’d already decided to respond to the ronin’s challenge and now must stand by that decision, even at the cost of literally everything he has lived for.
The combat with Seijurō is one of the most disturbing of Musashi’s “victories.” The close-up of the young master’s “amputation by katana” is particularly graphic (though the obviously fake blood detracts from the shot’s effectiveness). As if to make Seijurō’s humiliation complete, his brother Denshichirō appears at the very last minute, too late to save him. Seijurō’s story is a cautionary tale for those who, like him, believe that they were born to carry out a great destiny which they are, in fact, far too flawed to fulfill.
The figure of the “noble foe” is a familiar one in the most venerable classics of world literature. In the Western tradition, for example, Achilles in the Iliad requires the failure of his counterpart, the sympathetic but doomed Trojan warrior Hector, to give his victory meaning. The young, cunning Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s Henry IV needs the death of the brave and likable but fatally impulsive Hotspur to make his triumph on the battlefield all the more heroic.
In Japanese historical mythology, there’s no richer and more complex relationship between protagonist and adversary than that between the real-life swordsmen foes, Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojirō. In fact, there’s more than a little ambiguity about which of the two should be considered the “good guy” and which the “bad.” After all, quite a few movies have been made in Japan in which Sasaki, not Musashi, is the title character.1
A big part of the poignancy of the Musashi legend lies in the inevitable death of this most talented of the wandering samurai’s opponents, during the most celebrated duel of Miyamoto’s very violent life… indeed, the most famous duel in all samurai history. And Inagaki Hiroshi’s Miyamoto Musashi trilogy (1954-1956) – which is much better known, at least in the West, than Uchida’s later version – can be considered successful precisely to the degree with which it conveys the pathos of Sasaki’s ill-fated valor. So it’s no exaggeration to say that the success of any version of the Musashi saga depends as much upon the casting of this critical role as that of Musashi himself.
On paper, Takakura Ken would seem an ideal choice for the part. Arguably the only actor in Japanese film history even more macho than Mifune Toshirō (who had portrayed Musashi for Inagaki), Takakura definitely can claim sufficient masculine authority for this role. Indeed, in this movie he displays too much authority: the swordsman struts instead of walks, declaims instead of talks, sneers instead of smiles, all in a costume so gaudy and spotless that he looks as if he just stepped off a kabuki stage.
It seems very likely that Uchida pushed the performer in this direction as a reaction to Tsuruta Kōji’s intriguingly androgynous Sasaki from the earlier Inagaki trilogy.2 But the unfortunate result is that Nakamura’s Musashi seems almost effeminate by comparison with Takakura’s ultra-masculine super-samurai. As Paghat the Ratgirl, who has expressed her preference for Uchida’s pentalogy over the Inagaki trilogy, nonetheless observes, quite rightly, “Tsuruta’s interpretation treads gracefully on the line between attractive eccentricity & ridiculous excess,” while Takakura’s Sasaki seems merely over-the-top.
The problems with the character go beyond the actor’s interpretation, however. Sasaki ultimately decides that Musashi is one of the greatest swordsmen in the land before he ever even sees him wield a sword. By this point in the series, Musashi has engaged in so many fights that it’s easy to forget that his chief adversary has witnessed none of these. Yet at this film’s climax, after Sasaki suddenly appears on the Gojo Bridge and looks Musashi in the eye, he immediately advises Seijurō to withdraw his challenge rather than participate in the duel because he knows that Musashi is certain to win. But how on earth could he know how good Musashi is if he’s never seen him fight? The whole situation seems extremely far-fetched.
Takakura does have one particularly interesting scene, however. When Seijurō arrives on horseback to break up the fight between his men and Sasaki, the latter lunges at him, and the Young Master deftly dismounts with a single jump, earning the samurai’s admiration for this perfectly executed move. Sasaki and Seijurō then make peace, with the latter bringing him back to the dōjō as a potential ally against Musashi, though Sasaki will ultimately decline to fight the younger ronin for Seijurō.
This is the most effective set piece in the series up to this point, with its dynamic but disciplined camera movements. The dramatic standoff between Sasaki and Seijurō against a background of dark clouds appears to have been influenced by Kobayashi Masaki’s Harakiri (Seppuku), released the preceding year (1962) – a movie that revolutionized the chanbara genre, as Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai, 1954) and Yojimbo (1961) had previously done. And Sasaki reveals an appealing and uncharacteristic vulnerability in his surprise at discovering that Seijurō knows who he is. It’s unfortunate that the movie fails to adequately develop the relationship between these two characters, which might have brought more depth to this installment of the series.
In this film, Musashi, even more than in the previous installments, functions mostly as an agent of chaos, who brings trouble everywhere he goes.3 Yet the ronin’s ultimate goal couldn’t be more different than that of the righteous, tragic samurai played by Nakadai Tatsuya in the previously-mentioned Harakiri. That character attacks the bushido code head-on by forcing those samurai who had killed his son-in-law to recognize their hypocrisy and cowardice.
Musashi is, by contrast, the ultimate reactionary, rigidly upholding bushido while pursuing his own selfish ends, and not caring in the slightest how many lives are ruined in the process. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hero in any movie run away quite as often as Musashi does – though he had told Jotarō near the end of Part II that a samurai mustn’t ever run away.
At times, indeed, his obsessive nature makes him comically oblivious to the confusion he creates. In the scene at the inn, the samurai makes the little girl Docha hold in place the peony she had received from Otsu while he, without warning, slices the stem of the flower with his katana, after which the poor child runs out of the room, terrified. The anxious proprietor, her father, arrives to ask Musashi if his daughter had somehow offended him. (It says volumes about the society depicted that the man cares much more about the samurai’s feelings than his own child’s safety.) Musashi, astonished, denies this: it had never occurred to him that he had frightened the child, or that anyone would assume he was angry with her. So even when he means no harm, Musashi unsettles everyone around him.
Another issue I have with Musashi is his role in the killing of the dog Taro at Shinkage Hall, since I am fond of dogs. In defending Jotarō’s decision to murder the animal because it had scratched him – even though the boy had provoked it by brandishing a stick at it – Musashi is teaching his young disciple, in apparent contradiction to the books he’d read during his year in the castle, to place his pride above the right of other living things to survive. To say the least, this doesn’t endear the character to me.
In the early scenes of this installment, the filmmakers attempt to create a dramatic contrast between Musashi and Yoshioka Denshichirō, the brother of Seijurō. Denshichirō is portrayed as a totally unsympathetic character, because he insists on challenging the old patriarch even after the latter has made clear that he is refusing all challengers. The boorish young samurai even rejects the old man’s gift of the peony, considering it a worthless and insulting tribute and failing to note the significance of the perfectly-cut stem of the flower. Musashi does perceive this significance, but, in his initial refusal to take “no” from the patriarch as an answer, he’s just as bad as Denshichirō.
Later on, Musashi wavers when he reads the inscription on the gate leading to the patriarch’s residence, and concludes he has no right to disturb the peace of a man who is dedicating his old age to the peaceful contemplation of nature. This change of heart seems to indicate that the young man may finally be starting to mature.
Yet several scenes later, sitting by a campfire in the wilderness (which is reminiscent of the campfire scene with Takuan and Otsu in Part I), he vows to challenge the old man again after he kills Seijurō, completely forgetting his earlier resolution. If I were to make an armchair diagnosis of Musashi’s mental state, I’d guess that he probably suffers from a bad case of bipolar disorder, perhaps with added PTSD, due to the trauma of his defeat at the Battle of Sekigahara.
Obaba is a foolish old woman, yet she’s not wrong when, near the end of the narrative, she points out to Otsu the suffering that Musashi has pointlessly caused to so many. In a dramatic device also used at the conclusion of all other parts of the series, Musashi then addresses the viewer directly, irrationally justifying his actions to himself, despite admitting that he was wrong to attack the Yoshioka School, which had done him no harm. He then vows to continue pursuing his violent path, making a mockery of his resolution at the conclusion of Part One to “uphold life as precious… and treat it kindly.”4
Near the end of this lurid speech, Uchida decided to enhance Nakamura’s voice with some kind of reverb effect, apparently in an attempt to give epic weight to his words. But this vocal enhancement only winds up making him sound completely crazed, even Nazi-like. It’s a disconcertingly creepy moment that would make all but the most fanatical swordfighting fan question Musashi’s status as “hero.”
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