Continued from Part One.

Tearing Down the Myth

Although a broad streak of anti-feudalism lay at the heart of the chambara genre, the idea of honorably settling one's problems with a sword was often nonetheless lionized by such films. Eventually, even this notion began to be torn down as yet another assumption foisted upon Japanese society by an obsolete system of values.

In the film Harakiri (Seppuku, 1962), brilliantly directed by Kobayashi Masaki, the plot is driven by a bloody mixture of ritual suicide, honor, and revenge. It is an exquisitely filmed widescreen masterpiece that serves as illustration of some of the core principles of samurai thought and of their conflict with the modernization of Japan.

A ronin, Tsugumo Hanshiro, appears at a castle and asks that he be allowed to use their grounds to commit seppuku. The clan elder of the Iyi family relates to Tsugumo that another, younger ronin had requested exactly the same privilege only weeks before. Suspecting that the younger ronin was using the threat of suicide to extort money from them as other unemployed samurai had recently done, the Iyi compel the young man to immediately go through with the deed. Strangely, the man begs for two days to set some affairs in order, but the clan leaders refuse. They discover that his swords have been replaced with bamboo blades; his poverty has forced him to pawn his originals.

Scornfully, an Iyi swordsman berates him, saying, "A samurai's blade is his soul." In a gesture of brutal irony, they force him to agonizingly disembowel himself with his bamboo sword. Tsugumo finally relates that his own reason for approaching the Iyi is tied to the fate of the young ronin, his son-in-law, and that he is there to avenge the man's death. The son-in-law's original motive for extortion had been to get medicine for a sick child - hence his request for two more days. Tsugumo's last words to the Iyi before unleashing a bloody maelstrom are, "You boast of traditions of bravery. But even the code of the House of Iyi seeks only a false front!" At the end, the Iyi cover up their dishonorable actions, thus ironically proving the vanquished Tsugumo right.

Harakiri is a study in procedural formalities, as its characters push each other into action by repeatedly citing ideals of proper conduct, but the film demonstrates that the code of bushido, like any set of rules, can be used as thin justification for selfish cruelty by arrogant men. Bushido spelled out exactly of what was expected of a samurai under any circumstance. A mixture of protocol, ritual and nihilistic ruthlessness, bushido led to many logical dilemmas or paradoxes that were the heart of many samurai narratives.

Tsugumo is played by the legendary Nakadai Tatsuya, one of the most recognizable faces in chambara. His chiseled features often radiated coolness and composure, a façade that covered a glowing ember of rage and formidable power that would be mercilessly unleashed upon his foes.

Kenji Mizoguchi's The 47 Loyal Ronin Seppuku ("cutting the stomach"), or colloquially hara-kiri ("stomach cut"), had many forms according to circumstance. kanshi: performed to admonish an overlord and inspire him by self-sacrifice to correct errant or injudicious behavior. junshi or oibara: faithfully following one's master in death. funshi or munen-bara: when an oppressed or ill-used warrior takes his own life in righteous indignation. sokutsu-shi: death as form of apology. Part of the formality of seppuku typically required that a kaishaku, or second, be present to decapitate the person after they had slit their belly in order that their excruciating agony not be prolonged. Source: The Samurai Film, Alain Silver

Only decades after the war, at the end of the 1960s, did Japanese filmmakers feel comfortable with the open depiction of nationalist and anti-Western sentiment. Although xenophobia has long been a constant of the Japanese national character, specifically through the precedent of sakoku, the depiction of such anti-foreigner viewpoints would have been explicitly banned under the Occupation and were thus omitted from the cinema until long after the war. Even if such feelings were not held by the writers or directors of such films but simply by the historical characters they sought to describe, their mere depiction would have been seen as inflammatory.

Band of Assassins (Shinsengumi, 1969) begins with a shot of a European man in nineteenth-century clothing crying out as he is slashed with a sword, his blood to spraying across the camera lens. With a cut to a street scene of samurai cutting down other whites, we hear a voice shout out, "We will expel all the barbarians! We can't let the foreign barbarians disgrace Japan!"

Such violent actions were instigated by the sonno-joi ("Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians") movement. The film, set in 1863, is about the formation of an extremist militia called the Shinsengumi. Composed of fanatical roshi (masterless samurai, but not ronin), the Shinsengumi's sole purpose was to kill anyone who opposed the bakufu ("tent government" or "Shogunate") in direct opposition to the sonno-joi. Such shishi (anti-shogunate activists) accused the bakufu of bowing to foreign pressure - as it had already done in capitulating to Perry. Used as a political tool by its sponsoring clan, the Shinsengumi are ultimately fractured by politics and internal dissent.

Samurai Assassin (Samurai, 1965) shows the internal workings of the opposing movement, the pro-imperial sonno-joi. The story is framed by historical events that took place in 1860, specifically, the political assassination of a major bakufu official. Mifune Toshirô plays the previously quoted main character, Niino Tsuruchiyo, a low-level samurai who becomes a pawn in a larger political struggle to destabilize the Shogunate. The film's ending is steeped in irony; Niino's greatest triumph is simultaneously a personal tragedy as he unwittingly assassinates his own father at the film's end. A small fish in a big sea, he cannot win no matter which course he chooses and his final murder functions as a critique of right-wing extremism in that it suggests that in seeking to attack the enemy, you only attack yourself.

Both Band of Assassins and Samurai Assassin, despite their strong depiction of nationalistic zeal, nonetheless function as strong examples of anti-feudal thought; the film's main characters are inevitably presented as extremists blind to anything but the twisted internal logic of their bloody cause.

The Aftermath - Beyond 1970

From the 1970s onward, chambara has been primarily an exploitation vehicle with much less to say, growing bloodier often without getting deeper. As samurai film became subsumed into the larger body of the martial arts genre, it became less a vehicle for ideas and more an excuse for the glorification of slaughter. This would seem to be a broad step backwards in terms of what chambara had accomplished throughout the 1960s. Although death was no longer lionized as the nihilistic symbol of an empty code of honor, it was now shown, in greater detail than ever before, simply to appease a bloodthirsty audience.

A perfect example of this trend can be found in Katsu Shintarô's Razor trilogy (1972 - 1974). While the films are certainly broadly entertaining in their over-the-top gore and cartoonish misogyny, they lack any kind of political or social critique.

Another popular, equally bloody favorite is the unique Lone Wolf and Cub series of the early 1970s, sometimes referred to as the "Baby Cart Assassin" films. These are tales of former Shogun's Official Executioner Ogami Itto and his toddler son, Daigoro. Ogami, framed by enemies who also murdered his wife, now makes his way through the world as a killer for hire. For a fee of 500 gold ryo, he will assassinate anyone, no questions asked.

Daigoro's cart is more than a simple pram. It also functions as a rolling arsenal, and is packed with various weaponry hidden inside secret compartments. These films are also primarily exploitation vehicles and, while they are well-executed, smartly made and a cut above most, they are so focused on murder and mayhem that they are more akin to martial arts films than the chambara of the 1960s. The movies were based on a popular manga series of the same name, certainly one of the most beautifully executed, visually compelling comics ever done.

Gosha and Kurosawa continued to make films for the next several decades. Out of the many samurai pictures being made, perhaps only Gosha's work truly preserved the spirit of classic chambara, although his films tended to be about yakuza rather than samurai. Kurosawa, although going on to make some of his of greatest work yet, tended to create personal dramas or grand historical epics; following Sanjuro, none of his films was truly chambara.

Chambara, it would seem, had fulfilled its role as an important tool for the symbolic examination of a major sociopolitical shift in Japanese thought. Gradually, more of these films, many rarely seen in the West, are finally being made available. As a result, international audiences can continue to be rewarded by the incredible visual and thematic richness of some of the most remarkable, thrilling movies ever made.

For its invaluable help in preparation of this article, I am greatly indebted to Alain Silver's excellent, singular book The Samurai Film for its important insights and essential information. All Japanese names in this article are presented with the family name first and given name last.

Chambara Glossary
Here are a few terms. Some I have used in this article, some you might come across in samurai films, others might enlighten you as to some of the finer points of Japanese or samurai custom.
aniki	one's senior; elder brother; often used between yakuza as a term of respect
anata	dear (what a wife calls a husband)
ashigaru	foot soldiers; low-caste samurai
bakufu	military government (e.g. Tokugawa)
budo	martial arts
bushi	warriors
Butsudo	the way of Buddha
bushido	way of the warrior; a rigid code that governed samurai behavior
chambara, ken-geki	"sword theatre," i.e. samurai fiction or film
chori	outcast
daimyo	provincial (feudal) lord
giri	duty; literally the "right reason"
han	province
heimin	commoner
hinin	non-man; classes of untouchables; referred to as things rather than human beings, and with words usually reserved for animals
issho kemmei	striving, even unto death, for a place in the world
jidai-geki	"period theater," film typically set in Japan's feudal past
kaishaku	the second who beheaded a person committing seppuku
karoku	samurai stipend; first paid in rice, later gold
ke-nin	vassals
kirisutogomen	samurai right to kill lower classes in case of insult
metsuke	spies; informers
naginata	halberd (a blade attached to a long staff)
ninjo	conscience (often in conflict with giri)
oyabun	yakuza boss
ronin	masterless samurai; "man on the wave"
samurai	a Japanese knight; original meaning is "servant" or "retainer"
seppuku, hara-kiri	ritual suicide; "cutting the stomach"
shikozu	descendants of samurai after 1868
shinobi	ninja
shushigaku	predestination
Shinto	"the way of the gods," the pagan, pre-Buddhist Japanese religion. Its rituals persist in modern times
tono, tonosama	feudal lord
uji	clan or family
ujigami	ancestor worship
yakuza	gangster; member of the Japanese mafia. Ya=8, ku=9, za=3, which adds up to 20, a losing combination in the game of Oicho-Kabu, and is a humorously self-deprecating way of suggesting that a yakuza is a worthless person

Allen White is a writer, screenwriter and actor living in San Francisco. His current project is UnClean Arts.