| John Moret |
The Kenji Misumi’s Samurai Sixties series plays at the Trylon Cinema from Sundays to Tuesdays in September. Visit trylon.org for tickets and more information about these shows.
The samurai film is, in essence, a very conservative genre in the same realm as the western or horror film. Before you freak out, I don’t mean conservative in terms of politics (though, really…) but in form. The conventional film would witness a ronin finding his honor after losing his way. Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi, Hideo Gosha, and others would challenge this notion, but Kenji Misumi’s evolution of the genre can be felt as it happens. The path from Kiru to Lone Wolf and Cub (and beyond to the absolutely brutal Hanzo the Razor) is a distinctive path from traditional storyline to fantastical bloodbath.
Misumi’s father was a businessman from Kobe and his mother a geisha in Kyoto. Neither felt compelled to care for Kenji and he was raised by his aunt with some monetary assistance from his father. When Kenji decided he wanted to work in film, his father disagreed and they never spoke again. He was drafted into World War II and survived two and a half years in a Siberian POW camp. Upon his return, he began working at Daiei Studios. He turned down work at Toei (the center of the Kaiju universe) and other more A-level productions to work on his passion—chambara (samurai) films.
In 1962 Kenji Misumi directed The Tale of Zatoichi—though not the best Zatoichi film, it established the character and laid the foundation for the next 26 films in the original run (before the tv show and revitalization of more films). It also paved the way for Misumi’s Sword Trilogy. Long unavailable to watch in the States and overlooked as part of Misumi’s oeuvre, Ken, Kenki and Kiru are clear examples of the director’s restless anger and boundless energy. Though it is clear that he is wrestling with his own demons in these films, they are also a fascinating view into postwar Japan. It can be easy to forget that the war threatened not only the lives of everyone on the island, but that they feared erasure of their history and culture as well. These chambara films are not only a way to capture that lost history, but a bittersweet nostalgia.
With this series I chose to not highlight Misumi’s most famous (or infamous) Lone Wolf and Cub films (though, I’d like to do that soon), but instead to dive into this particular moment in time. In the early 1960s, Yasujirô Ozu was telling gentle stories of generational divide. Across the pond, John Frankenheimer was awash in the dread of the red scare. The fear of atomic warfare was ever-present. Kenji Misumi chose to tell adventure stories of honor among fathers and sons.
Kenki follows a samurai with questionable parentage, and there are rumors that he is the product of the union of a woman and a dog. He has strange, even mystical powers and his isolation and abandonment make him exceptionally empathetic. Kiru follows a young samurai who has an unstoppable technique. He is raised by a surrogate father and only finds out later the mysterious lineage of his deceased parents. Fight Zatoichi Fight finds the blind swordsman inheriting the protection of a baby, tragically and accidentally orphaned through his own actions. The seeming odd one out, Ken, is based on a story by Mishima and wrestles with the conflict of society losing both tradition and honor.
As a reflection of Misumi’s own tragic origins and the trials of Japan during the postwar period, these contemplate the tidal wave of change that was the second half of the twentieth century. Misumi’s films in the 1970s would continue these themes, but the bloodless choreographed sword battles would be traded in for adventures among mythical villains and gushing rivers of gore. One thing that remains constant in his work is the cry of a lonely child protected by a father figure. And the protector, likewise, is pushed on and cleansed by his obligation to this child. Which, really, is at the core of Ozu’s films as well.
Misumi’s films leave us with these questions. Where does our obligation to the young end? What wisdom do we gain by caring for them? What future remains if we stop?
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon