Samurai drama
- Written by Yoji Yamada, Emiko Hiramatsu, and Ichiro Yamamoto
- Directed by Yoji Yamada
Yoji Yamada makes Samurai films like nobody else’s. Past works like Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade looked at the legendary warriors as lower-middleclass drones, worrying about money as they perform their dull peacetime jobs for an indifferent lord for whom they may one day be called upon to die. Their concerns involve financial problems, unbreakable class barriers (even within the Samurai), and marital problems. And when they’re inevitably called upon to actually fight a duel, the odds seem realistically against them. It’s as if Yamada wants to tear open the whole Samurai myth and find the reality hiding behind it.
In Love and Honor, he rips the whole Zatoichi franchise to shreds.
Takuya Kimura stars as Shinnojo Mimura, yet another low-level samurai. At least
his hated day-to-day job has an element of danger. He’s an official food taster, ever on the lookout for poison. He swallows some, and although he survives, he loses his eyesight.
What good, in this unromantic view of old Japan, is a blind samurai? A blind peasant can earn a living as a storyteller or a masseuse, but no one born to the samurai class could do such a thing. Nor can his loving wife (Rei Dan) take a job without shaming the family. The combination of emotional depression and looming financial disaster soon strain the initially happy marriage.
Even a serious samurai film must have swordplay, and events (which I prefer you discover on your own) eventually force Shinnojo into one-on-one battle without benefit of sight. But Yamada doesn’t pretend that a blind man can be a brilliant fencer; Shinnojo’s one strategic advantage doesn’t promise a long, Zatoichi-style career fighting for truth, justice, and the Japanese way.
Small, flying animals make an interesting reoccurring theme. The couple keep a pair of song birds in a cage. At one point, Shinnojo wishes he could fly away “like a bat.” Different scenes feature fireflies, mosquitoes, and a very lovely butterfly.
The ending stretches credibility a bit, with a resolution tha’s both overly convenient and visible from a mile away. But that doesn’t mar what Yamada has given us: Another realistic look at people trying to get by in a medieval Japan very different from the romanticized one we’re used to. Yet he still manages to work in a really good swordfight.
Bayflicks 