Film Screening: Samurai Spy (Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke)

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In another of his studies of men of action who experience the loss of grounds for action, Shinoda contemplates the adventures of a sort of super-ninja (Takahashi Koji) who navigates the political complexities and martial perils of early 17th-century Japan. The plot of Samurai Spy is complex, but the film can be appreciated without following it in every detail or knowing anything about its historical background. More than Assassination, Samurai Spy is a crowd-pleasing genre piece in which Shinoda shows his mastery through style and ideological contention. Shinoda succeeds above all with effects of counterpoint: a festival contrasted with violence and death, dramatic commotion giving way to silence, a final showdown first withdrawn from view by a distant camera, then obliterated by white fog.

Screening on Film

Directed by Shinoda Masahiro.
With Takahashi Koji, Tanba Tetsuro, Yoshimura Jitsuko.
Japan, 1965, 35mm, black & white, 99 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: The Japan Foundation

From the Shochiku Collection at the Harvard Film Archive: Sixties Shinoda film series co-presented by the Japan Foundation and co-sponsored by the Reischauer Institute